351: How To Use Facebook Groups To Make Millions Selling Keto Products With Jen Garza

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You’re listening to the My Wife Could 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 my dear friend, Jennifer Marie Garza on the show, and Jen is the founder of lowcarbinspirations.com, where she specializes in keto. She’s the author of one of the highest selling keto cookbooks of all time called Easy Keto for Busy People. And today we’re going to learn how she generates most of her engagement and her sales with Facebook groups. But before we begin, I want to thank Clavia for sponsoring this episode.

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Welcome to the My Wife Coder Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Jennifer Marie Garza on the show. Now Jen is the founder of Low Carb Inspirations.com, which is a company that specializes in keto and healthy living. She’s also the author of one of the highest selling keto cookbooks of all time called Easy Keto for Busy People. And I believe that when she launched it, was number two on all of Amazon.

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She runs a gigantic Facebook group of almost 200,000 members and a Facebook page of almost 700,000 fans. And I just found out from chatting with her before this, she actually has another group of 100,000 related to keto as well. And she also sells a variety of keto related resources over at lowcarbinspirations.com. Now Jen is actually easily the most successful person I know in this space and she is a rock star, but I have to warn you.

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that she’s also extremely humble and modest, probably one of the most humble people that I know. So what I’m going to try to do today is I’m going to do my best today to force her to brag about herself. And with that, welcome to show, Jen, how are you doing today? How are you? I’m so happy to be here. I meant what I said, by the way, you are easily one of the most humble people I know. And I don’t do well talking about bragging about myself. Let’s start this off in case people who do not know who you are.

04:06
What led you to writing about keto or publishing about keto? See, I’m four years into my journey. So when I started, I didn’t know where to go. There was no information and I was trying to figure it out. And that is a not a good place to be in. So I just really wanted to make it simple for other people wanting to get healthy and do low carb. So why keto in the first place actually? Was there a goal? The only thing that worked for me, the only one and I’ve tried

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Every diet plan, every crazy thing, every pill, potion, powder, I’ve tried it all to lose weight and nothing worked. So this is literally the only thing that worked. Actually same here. I didn’t go keto, but I went extremely low carb and I lost 35 pounds I think in four months. Wow. And not only that, but my head is a lot clearer. I don’t get any food coma or anything like that and I just feel fantastic.

05:05
Yes. Yeah. And that’s so that kind of leads to why I named my website low carb inspirations.com is because keto is so strict. It’s like you have to live life. And I couldn’t sell I couldn’t see myself being that strict forever. But I knew being that strict would get me to my goals. And then I knew going forward, I still know that I will forever in my lifetime be low carb.

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Same here, actually, I was very strict for an entire month and it was actually miserable. But then I found by just going low carb, you can maintain it pretty easily. you use keto to get where you want. You use keto to help with your inflammation, to reduce body fat, help with the brain fog, do all the stuff that you need it to do and then maintain with low carb. Exactly. So your book, I noticed, is named keto. Is it because that’s the word that people search for?

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Or if you had your druthers, would you have named it like low carb cookbook or something like that? No, I believe in keto and I help people to do keto. So I will still help people to do keto. I feel like there’s stages. I feel like there’s stages. It’s like you start off and you want to do keto, but you’re really doing low carb because you don’t understand keto. And then you lose a few pounds and you’re like, man, I feel good and the food is good. And then you get stricter and then you really do become keto.

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And then it really, really works. And then you’re like, holy cow, this is awesome. And then you get to like a carnivore stage to where you’re like, wow, I can get really strict and get to my goals even faster. And then you incorporate like intermittent fasting because it really helps you make you feel good. And then you get to your goals and you’re like, okay, I’ve done it. I’ve gone there. Now I want to live life a little bit and maintain. And that’s where you hit like low carbs. So I feel like

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there’s just a bunch of stages, you know, so I think my publisher found me through keto friendly recipes, Facebook page, and, you know, they wanted to monetize off the keto name, and it was in the very beginning stages. So that was the name of the page. But as me thinking of a whole new website, I was like, I could see the stages. And I could see that I didn’t want to be that forever. And

07:26
I just thought keto is low carb. It’s just a stricter form. So it fits and my vision long-term is low carb. It’s just keto is a piece of it. It’s funny. I went through the exact stages that you were talking about, like word for word, literally. Yeah. Yeah, I’ve been doing this long enough to know like, hey, what stage are you in and why are there keto police? It’s because you’re in this stage and they’re in that stage and it’s okay.

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So what’s funny about this is the keto police was my mom. She saw me when I lost, I actually lost more than 35 pounds overall. And she looked at me and in Asian cultures, it’s actually better to be a little bit plump because it like symbolizes prosperity. And all of a sudden my face was the most noticeable. It was like kind of like gone. She was like, oh my God, can I give you some money and feed you? Are you doing okay? Do you need money? Oh, That’s funny.

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So in terms of your income, I know you make a lot of money in full-time income doing this. Where’s your, what are your earners? Is it the stuff that you sell on your website or is it your book? So in the past two years, my main focus has been on the two books that I put out and one here and I have an agent and we negotiated some amazing contracts.

08:47
In fact, in talking with my agent, I’m not allowed to say what it is that I got. But I’m I know it was like, I’m trying to, you know, build into what you want me to talk about. Oh, no, it’s okay. You don’t need to use numbers at all. We’re just trying to get an idea of you know, where where all the money. Yes. So the book, the first book, I know that my my agent negotiated a rate that out of every other publisher that I know of, it was double that. So

09:16
Most of my income for the last two years has been the books and the, you know, you get royalties from that. So that’s continuing. But this last year, I would say it’s I’ve self published a book. I have to give first rights to my agent. If ever I do another book, and they didn’t want my latest book, which is fine by me. Right. The latest book that continues to sell every day is probably telling people what that book is.

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It’s called keto chocolate recipes. We were just chatting about this just before. See, I have to pull the information out of Jen just case you guys are listening. She doesn’t like to self promote at all. Not at all. I am not good at self promotion. I know. I know. I have to do it for you. So can you talk about self publishing versus going with a publisher and an agent? Yeah. So I don’t know how you pitch an agent because

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Publishers find you if you have a little bit of popularity online and you have a big audience They know you can sell and if you’re not selling anything, it’s a total win for them. So this publisher Houghton Mifflin hardcore HMH came to me and wanted me to publish the book and Then you negotiate a contract you can work with an agent without an agent you negotiate all the terms and I don’t know if you know this but an agent because I was even

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wondering if I should have an agent or not. She was able to negotiate a lot more that paid for her salary plus more, but her job, main job, one of the things I learned is that her main job is she will get you all the money that she thinks that book will make upfront, meaning you will be paid in full upfront for the life of that book. And her job is to get you that upfront and not make royalties on the end.

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So that’s the benefit of having an agent is that they get you paid upfront for the work that you’ve done. So if you do end up getting royalties, then she miscalculated and the negotiations can go better for the next book. I see. Yeah. I never knew that process. So I knew the negotiation was great in the beginning. So when the book started doing very well, I was like, Oh my goodness. I didn’t even think about royalties because I, I,

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would have done it just for what you gave me. This is how we had that discussion and that royalties are paid out I think twice a year and I had hit royalty payout in the first term after the book was published, which was super rare. So does that mean that you probably could have made more money by taking less upfront and getting more on the royalties back in then?

12:03
No, I personally don’t think so. Because at that time, I wasn’t for sure if keto was a trend. And I knew how I felt about keto, I knew how I would be in it and then out. So I kind of took that into consideration as to how long a book titled keto would actually go for in a couple of years. Does that make sense? Yeah, actually, it does. Yeah. But but why not self publish this book? I think

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leads to little bit of self confidence issues. Which you should never have. yeah, well, you know, as an overweight person who’s been overweight, like there’s confidence issues that comes with that just perfectly honest. No, but I had I had a big audience and I’ve never sold to them. And the contract was written in a way to where, you know, I had a huge team that supported me and team with skills that I couldn’t do. I’m not a photographer.

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I’m not a food stylist. So for them to take my recipes that I know are successful and have a team make them, style them, photograph them and put them into a book. I mean, that’s a huge deal for it to give off a good first impression. So I am happy I did that and I don’t regret that either. So I didn’t realize. So they sent a team of photographers into your house. No, I went to New York. Oh, okay.

13:30
went for almost two weeks. Every photograph in every one of my book is food that was actually cooked in a studio. And there was a team of six people, a photographer and assistant, a food stylist and assistant, and the head cook and an assistant. And it was like a streamlined process to where we chose, way ahead of time, we chose what recipes we wanted in the book.

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and then they would plan out and have all the groceries in this little bitty studio in New York City. And then they would cook in batches and the food styling and the photographers would prep up the site while the food is being cooked. And it was like this assembly line of just food making. That is so cool, actually. Yeah, it’s very cool. In fact, I should write

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I’ve been tempted to write a blog post on it because I took a lot of photos and just to kind of see the process. I mean, my kitchen is fairly big and in this studio in New York, it was super small. So I was amazed that there was literally eight of us in this little place with one normal fridge and two mini fridge, and then one oven and a couple of convection ovens. I was like, oh my God, like you guys are serious. Well, everything’s bigger in Texas. You realize that.

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So, okay, so that book, I can understand now. I mean, you wouldn’t have had the resources or the photographers and all that to pull that off. But then this Chaffles book that you just put out, did you take all your own photos? Yes. Okay. Well, I got confidence then. Okay, I see. So that first book deal gave you the confidence to publish the other. And then I did a second book deal just because

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Literally, they came at me a week after the first one published because it went that well and offered me the second deal. Wow. I was like, holy crap, do I get a break? I just finished. And then the time frame of hurry up and get it out there is crazy. So I agreed to do all of that work again. And I think that ruined me because now I don’t ever want to do it again. I remember you posted on the Facebook, I think it was your personal page.

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You had to come up with some insane number of recipes in an insane short amount of time. Yeah. 125 recipes in four months. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah. That probably burned you out too. It did. Yeah. By the way, how do you move so many books? How do I, what do you mean? That first book that launched and you met all your goals. I imagine whenever you publish a book, you are responsible for driving a lot of the sales, right? They do.

16:23
I have learned that they do very little. This is why they pitched me. I have a huge audience. I’m well connected to that audience and I’ve never sold to that audience. So when you get people that know, like and trust you and you come up with something, people will buy that just because you helped them, even if they don’t need it, which I really feel is the key. So given that you never sold to your group before, how did you frame the offer when you did post it?

16:51
just that I’m finally doing a cookbook, I guess I’m finally offering you another tool to help you on your keto journey. And there’s some people that like that some people that don’t. But for those people that don’t like it, I still offer those recipes, most of the recipes free on my website that they can print. So there’s just some people that like that tool in their kitchen that they can hold on to. was most of your advertising for your book just based on your Facebook group?

17:21
Yes, the group is where I had the most in-depth conversation. So if people wanted to talk to me, they knew that I was most active in my group. So I would show processes in the group. I think the biggest thing that probably brought all those sales is that I did a live weekly on Facebook with many different keto experts. And we just talked about the struggles.

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and solutions that came along with the journey and then threw in a little blurp at the end. Hey, I’m coming out with a book. It’s going to launch here. And you just stir up that conversation. I see. Did you do stuff on your page as well as the group when you went live? So I always go live on my page first, because that’s where anybody can see it. And then I would share it to the closed group. Okay. And then what about was email a factor or was it just mainly social channels?

18:17
You know, I just, focused on social and I didn’t even do ads either. It was just a matter of connecting with your audience. Amazing. Are you allowed to give an idea of how many books were sold in that short period of time for that first book? Oh, I wish I would have known we were talking about this. I don’t even remember. I know that it’s a big deal for you to sell a hundred thousand books. And I do know I hit that mark because

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the publisher only prints so many and then, you know, reorders come in quickly. And then when you hit a certain mark, they’re like screaming. Here’s the here’s the other thing to know is that I’ve been told that selling 35,000 books from a published book makes it a successful book. And I know I’ve done over 100,000. Which is crazy, because if you look your group was

19:14
Maybe it’s probably grown since then, but at the time it was probably less than 200,000. And that implies that almost everyone bought a book. know, but the books were in like the Amazon stores and, you know, Target and Sam. So there’s a lot of people that didn’t even know me that see it on the shelves though, too. And then they find me and read the book and then come in and find me. So I think it’s a push for both. think

19:44
My audience is what really lifted it. And then to really sell over that amount is how it got into big stores. That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, let’s switch gears a little bit and talk about Facebook groups. mean, you seem to have a knack for creating them. I have a very small group of, I want to say 13,000, and it’s actually a nightmare to manage. I’m sure you have some experiences there, but let’s say you’re starting from scratch with a Facebook group.

20:14
How do you grow it initially? So I start the groups as public so anybody can find them. And let me just say real quick ahead of time, I haven’t started a group in a little while. So I don’t know if the rules have changed for starting groups, but I remember starting a group. that Chaffles group? That’s relatively new, isn’t it? I think it’s about a year old now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s relatively new. Okay, okay.

20:41
So when I started the group, I would make it public and I would just share, you know, to my Facebook page and my other group. Everything would be shared to the Facebook page, because that’s kind of like what I think of as my business card as to, hey, come see who I am. And then the group is what I consider like my living room. And I’m like, hey, you see the Facebook page, you’re at my front door of my house, you like what it is. And I welcome you into my living room. And that’s what I consider my group.

21:09
So I’m like, hey, this is what we have. Come on into my group. And I might do that via my Facebook page or my email list. And I might also offer them like, here’s a printable of the top 10 best recipes for this particular group, like the Chaffles group with here’s the top 10 recipes for the Chaffle group. And then just to be in and around people who like the same subject is just how you

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get people into that group.

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22:51
So I took a look at your Facebook page and the groups and it seems like most of your focus is on the group, the page you post, but it’s not conversational. No, The page, so my page, my Facebook page, the way I look at that is that I’m walking around in the world and somebody might see it and they may or may not like keto. And if they like keto, then there’s my business card. It’s kind of like that first introduction to a relationship.

23:20
It’s like, hey, if you like it, come follow along. And then if they really get to like it, and if they actually like read a blog post or actually, you know, do a recipe in the blog post, I will say, if you want to be part of this, or if you want to talk to other like minded people, let me invite you to this group, because here’s where we really test and talk and have fun. And then that’s how they get invited into the group. So how often do you post about the group on your Facebook page?

23:52
Not hardly at all. want to make sure before I invite them to my living room, I want to make sure that they won’t miss the subject. Okay. And so I will get those people in a blog post. If they took the time to read, we all know how hard it is to get somebody to read a blog post, but if they took time to read the blog post, I will tell them the benefits of being in the group and give them the invitation in the group. as a business person, I would make sure that all of your top

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blog posts that get traffic, I would make sure that you have that invitation in there that relates to the subject of the group. Interesting. So do you try to go for a Facebook group sign up over an email sign up?

24:36
I could. Well, I’m just asking like how you have it set up because you know, in general, if you have if you’re trying to get somebody to do too many things, it gets more difficult. Yeah, but if they so if you find a chaffle recipe of mine that has been super popular and lots of people are seeing it. They really like that. And all of a they’re like, Oh my god, this is awesome. You can make bread in a mini waffle maker.

25:00
Just like that reaction I just gave you in our earlier conversation. Yeah, so they’re going to read further and they’re going to go, oh my god, she has a group. I got to join that group. Like it just gets them excited. And I get most people in my group by engaging in recipes first. Okay. And then in the group, the second step is that people are so excited to be in the group, they invite all of their friends.

25:25
Oh my God, you’re doing low carb. You got to be in this group. It’s so cool. We share all this stuff and there’s all kinds of recipes and you know, that’s how it works. So I’m going to ask you this question because it’s like a chicken and egg. Does your website bring people to the group or does the Facebook channels bring traffic to your website? In the beginning, I would have to get traffic to my website first because that’s how I got people into the group.

25:54
In fact, I wouldn’t even invite my friends. know how all these people say, invite your friends, invite this. I would never want any of my friends who don’t care about this to be in my group. Why is that? Does that hurt the group? I feel it does. I don’t know if it really does. But if you’re not, if you don’t care about chaffles or if you don’t care about low carb recipes or if you don’t care about keto.

26:19
You will never interact in the group. You will never take part. So I would never want you in there. I just wouldn’t. You might not like what we’re doing. I want happy people who are in the journey to be part of it. Does that imply then that you prune members who are inactive from the group? I have. have. So let’s talk about the intricacies of group management here because I can’t imagine my small group has tons of spam.

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Yeah. And it’s almost like a full time job for someone to just kind of moderate it. Yes. I have a love hate relationship with Facebook right now. I don’t ever believe in just doing one platform. And my love right now is TikTok. Oh, I didn’t know you had a TikTok channel. Okay, I’ll have to subscribe. started my TikTok channel and I just hit 10k. So wow, I know. know. So I’m super happy because TikTok is like fun and happy and

27:16
But anyway, back to Facebook. Well, we can talk about TikTok at the end, actually. I’m sorry, what did you? So we were talking about the group and managing it. Oh, managing it. OK, so when I first started my group and it was super small, I really wanted people to feel welcome. And I wanted them to know that I would share anything and everything in my journey, pretty, happy, ugly anything. So I really.

27:42
just shared and really just was super open, super authentic. And I really feel like that’s how it grew. And then- How many times were you posting in it a day? Honestly, I would check the group every two hours that I was awake. So technically from 8 a.m., I would wake up, first check the group because I moderated all of the posts too. So I didn’t let anybody post without me seeing because it was so important for me.

28:12
I think when you’re overweight and trying to lose weight, you are so used to people body shaming you and being ugly and talking negative to you that I really, really wanted this to be a very positive experience. So I would moderate a ton and it would be every two hours of every waking minute from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. I would be in the group. I would check it before I went to bed. I’d check it right before I got up. I would approve posts.

28:41
And this was before even you could set up words to have flag words to find, you know, things. sometimes you get something that goes negative or whatever, and you find them within those two hours. And I did that for probably two years. Luckily though, when you are very open and authentic and people really like to connect with you, you will get volunteers. And…

29:06
Even me just saying, I am so sorry for that negative post, guys. would, I never want you to experience that. It’s super hard for me to keep up with this growing group. And then people are like, I’ll help you. I’ll help you. And you’re like, Hey, that’s awesome. So then you bring on some moderators that are volunteer. And then I even had, you know, one that was paid and it was not even paid that much. was just like 25 a week. And that was just for her to really.

29:35
help out because she loved it and she loved a little bit of extra money. do you recommend turning on full moderation in the beginning just to make sure that you can curate the type of posts that you want to see in that group? So I think groups can easily be overrun with spam and in the world of keto there is everybody and their mom seems to be selling some ketone and I just I don’t believe in it. I believe in good food and

30:03
and stuff like that. So I really cared what the feel of my group was. I wanted it to be positive. I don’t ever want somebody to feel like it’s a hateful place to be because I wouldn’t want to be there. And then I really have, I mean, I’m growing this group for the group. I want to be in this group. I want to be in this group. So I build tools to help people along their journey that are not spammy. So

30:31
Don’t bring your stuff into my group. Don’t bring your negativity. Don’t bring yourself promotion. If you want that, you grow your own group. Right, right. So yes, yes. I felt very strongly in the beginning. You set, you set a first impression. You really do. I a hundred percent agree. And just, I’m clearly not doing it right, but I was getting spam comments. Actually, I was only getting spam comments. So finally I just turned on full moderation and I just banned people.

31:00
Like right away. I banned for no reason. I banned immediately for with no warning because their warning was given when they sign up.

31:10
Okay, that’s interesting. So how do you structure the signup process for the group just to make sure that the ideals for the group are communicated properly? So in the beginning, it probably seems a bit harsh, but I’m sure that they will not sell. If there is self promotion of any kind, you need to ask an admin before you do it. Any sort of links and stuff is considered self promotion, right? Anything that you sell that is related to you is considered a self promotion. Okay.

31:40
So self-promotion in any kind is not approved. So these people who think they can sign up for ClickBank and do all of these affiliates, that’s self-promotion. That’s a promotion. You cannot do that. So I just don’t allow people to self-promote or make money off of that. And you you get some people who, who, well, you put your affiliate link. Yeah, I grew the group. I trust what I put and I don’t have to explain that. And

32:09
The first thing is you have to be positive. You have to be positive and no self-promotion. Like those are my two rules. And I feel like positivity and no self-promotion, those are my rules for weeding out people. So if I get somebody that wants to affiliate mark and they just built a Clickmuna webpage selling this 28 day keto kickstart, whatever, and you’re blasting it in my group or you’re

32:36
promoting to go to your own group, I just don’t allow it. So when your group is public in the beginning, just to get that initial set of members, when do you turn that off? I made it private pretty quick. I want to say within the first month, if you know, I was able to have a customized name, which I think you can do now right off the bat. yeah, I turned it off pretty quick when I got, I think like under 100 people or something. I just was like, you know,

33:06
The way I thought about it is the content. I didn’t want people to read my struggles with weight loss. I really didn’t want, I have a lot of friends on Facebook and some of them are, you know, on Capitol Hill. Some of them are with the police. I don’t want them seeing my talk on my struggle. I just don’t. So I think that’s how you think of it. Do you want people, do you want to control that audience or do you want only the people who want to be there?

33:37
to see the conversation. And I know this is really far back now, but for my group, which is pretty much dead at this point, I feel like you constantly have to be posting in order to initiate some conversations because people are shy in the very beginning. So can you talk about the process in the beginning about your posting schedule? And then is it still full moderation today? No, it’s not. I have so many moderators now that volunteer, all volunteer now.

34:06
that I am not in there every two hours anymore. This is my hate side. I just, just, uh, I feel like there’s been a switch with Facebook and I feel like a lot of people I can see in the analytics how, you know, even with all this political stuff, I can see where people have even left Facebook. So I go, I look as my business, as I really focus on sharing over all platforms.

34:35
And I look at what brings me joy. And that’s probably why I’m TikTok mainly right now. But I still share, know, there’s ways to schedule in the group. I’m not just going to leave those people hanging. I will post something in the group that sparks conversation. It’s never all about promoting. Like yesterday or the day before, my daughter made this amazing poke bowl all on her own. It was a beautiful presentation. So I snapped a photo and said,

35:04
Okay, if my 16 year old can make a keto friendly or low carb recipe, y’all can do it too. Here, look. And it just, didn’t lead anywhere. just was conversation. It was just fun. It was just, you know, it’s just keeping that conversation going, but it’s more in and out. And I don’t know. You actually grew a group to a hundred thousand relatively recently when you started that group.

35:29
Can you just kind of comment on posting frequency and the types of things that you posted about just to kind of generate some conversation so that you weren’t the only one doing it? So I feel like that my Chaffles group is what you’re referring to. And I feel like that one is almost a cheater way to start a group and grow it really fast because I was literally getting 500 to 1500 people to join a day. And it was really hard for me to keep up even.

35:57
going through these profiles to see who were spam accounts and who weren’t. So I feel like I hit on that group, I helped to start a trend. I helped to create a trend by creating a product that wasn’t out there on the market. And then I drew people in with showing them how you can take

36:20
this thing and do this and guess what? You can make a cake out of it or you could do this or you could, and it’s not been done before. So I think that group was like my easiest group to grow because you find something on an upward trend and you create a group around it that if you have that focus and it’s just really easy to be, it’s just really easy to take a viral blog post and invite people. Okay. Well then let’s talk about your main page then. How often were you posting?

36:50
And what were the types of things that you were posting to generate the conversations? On the Facebook page? On the group. Oh, on the group. So the low carb inspirations group. That’s correct. Here’s what I would do. I would really focus on the conversations. And if there is a huge conversation about whether you can cheat on Cheeto, if you can cheat on Cheeto,

37:16
If you can cheat, like if there’s a big conversation about that, I may go in and do a live on it or I may go in and I might write an article to give people those answers and then talk about that. It just depends. I would really focus on what the conversation was and what the needs are of the group members. And I would try and provide them with either a blog post, a live video or something, something. A blog post. Would you post that on the group?

37:46
Like the contents or just the link? No, I would, I always focus my traffic to go back to something that pays me. So I really do. Now there are some times where I may just, I don’t promote all the time. I feel like if I promote all the time, then it comes across as inauthentic. I mean, I will post like in my own journey, there’s things called non-scale victories, NSVs, and I will

38:15
totally post a selfie of me in a fitting room, because I’m about to cry in happiness that I can button these pants that I never thought I could get into. And people feel that like they understand that. you, you, you keep it authentic. You keep it as you’re in the same journey there are and you’re sharing your things. Like I remember posting me being able to buckle on an airplane, which I haven’t been on in so long. I remember being able to buckle my seatbelt and have like

38:45
a massive amount of belt like leftover and flapping and I that’s that’s different. And those are tear moments that are tearjerkers of happiness. And just to take a selfie showing that. And you know what people feel that people are like, Oh my god, that’s where I am I can barely fit in a seat and I want to get where she’s at she knows she understands the struggle. Or people who have like, Oh my god, that was my same tearful moment.

39:14
So you’re just really connecting and then, you know, you write blog posts that help people like stuff that you can’t type out in one or two sentences, like intermittent fasting, explaining what breaks the fast and what doesn’t, you know what? Here’s a blog post. It’s maybe a five minute read, read it. It will be very beneficial to you. will completely understand it. Here’s the link. a lot of this stuff comes easy to you. And what I’m trying to get out of you is, and I know there’s no formula here.

39:43
And I know everything that you do just comes really naturally. But in the beginning, like, let’s say you have a group that’s kind of dead, right? What are some things that you post to even get those conversations so that you can even help people? Because you don’t know what they want in the beginning. Well, this is hard to talk about because I don’t know the subject of the group, but I would look at the subject of the group and I would literally think of you. would put yourself in your customer shoes and I would write out their journey. I would write out their

40:13
beginning, start and end journey. And I would write out struggles of that, or I would even ask my group, I would almost survey them, hey, where are you struggling? What can I help you with? And this is how I would build my content or I would do it the easy way and I could go to answerthepublic.com and I would type in the keyword that you’re trying to hit and see where people have questions. And then I would just say, hey, let’s talk about X today. And let me give you my three tips.

40:42
Okay. Is that how it does actually, and I’m just trying to get an idea. This these are the processes that you used when you started that main group, the low carb inspirations group. Yeah, and I still I still do that. Like I still I always think of the person who’s reading the blog post or the person who’s in the journey. And I try and act like I’m talking directly to them. And I try and figure out all that like, I’m too deep in this process.

41:11
I’m too deep in it. So I have to step outside and I have to go to websites like answer the public.com because I cook all the time in my house, but I don’t understand that somebody may need this. And to me, I thought that was common knowledge. So I have to really research to see what are people asking? What are people asking that I know that I can help them with? Do you have any guidelines on, especially in the beginning, how many times you need to post?

41:41
to kind of jumpstart a group.

41:44
Hmm. Or just remember how many times you were posting in the beginning. Yeah. You know, it’s funny when you only have 10 people in there. I’m just very attentive to answer their questions or to feel like I’m over delivering. And then when you have 50 people in there, 100 people, then you find like when you do that, then other people follow your lead and then you don’t have to do it as much. So there’s no real schedule, but

42:14
I mean, if I looked at it and if somebody posted four hours ago and didn’t get an answer, I would feel bad. Wow. Okay. Yeah. But I mean, that’s, that’s the growing of the group in the very beginning. And maybe you started up with a group of friends who all have the same philosophy and maybe you guys take turns or there’s lots of ways that you can do it, but really think about like for my group, I didn’t want people to not have answers. I wanted them to have answers. want them to feel good. So I will post.

42:44
feel good things, and then I will answer their questions. So. Let me ask you this. If you were to start all over again, do you still think Facebook groups is the best way to build community today? You know, I, I, I, this is the love part for Facebook groups because you could have posted something a year ago. And if somebody searches, like I tell people to search my name all the time and whatever they’re looking for.

43:11
because something that I posted three years ago could pop up back into conversation. Like I have my before and after photo, I have my husband’s before and after photo, and my daughter’s 16 now, but when she went through keto, she was 12, and I still have that before and after photo. So sometimes you bump those conversations back up and it shows social proof of all these people who liked it and talked about it, and then you get the conversation started again. So it’s just a bank of information.

43:41
keep it clean. It’s a really good bank of information. So just for the people listening out there, starting a Facebook group in the in beginning is no joke. It sounds like you were monitoring it every two hours. And that’s what it takes, right? To jumpstart the group. And then once you get a group of engaged followers, then you can kind of loosen the reins a little bit, maybe get some moderators and make your life easier. Does that sound about accurate? Yeah, that’s it. That sounds accurate. I mean, you could start it maybe a little less intense and maybe

44:11
connect with people who are really close to you and you all take turns or take timeframes or take days even and you really grow it. And this is only my way. I’m sure there’s other ways to grow. But this way works Jen. does and it pays off big. Like anything worth doing is worth doing well. Right. I think that’s the key is that if you if you look at your person, the person you’re trying to help.

44:39
You create a good impression. You provide information. feel they feel like you’re there with them on the journey. I tell people all the time when they post, I love watching your journey. I loved watching your journey. Or I love how all the positive stuff you share in the group because I really am watching and they feel like Jen commented, which is

45:04
It’s so weird, but it’s true. They feel you, you build this connection and isn’t that the, isn’t that the next level of marketing is that if they feel like you’re there for them, if they feel like you’ve held their hand and if they feel like you’re dedicated to their success, aren’t they dedicated to you? I mean, that’s what marketing is all about. And a lot of people just start running ads and stuff, but that’s very impersonal. mean, this is the grassroots way of doing it. way you’ve done it. is. it’s not easy. I mean, it’s not easy. That is not easy, but

45:34
I don’t moderate the group as much anymore. I’m not in there every two hours. Thank God. It feels like a weight lifted when you have so many people who can help you. And I’m constantly bringing on new moderators because there was somebody yesterday that messaged me and said, Hey, there’s somebody promoting a 28 day thing and putting their own group. Do you guys allow that? And I’m like, no, but thank you. Hey, you want to be a moderator? You’d be great.

46:02
The benefits are great. You don’t get paid, but let’s not worry about that. Well, here’s the thing too. People who are in this, it’s a journey. So sometimes they’re really into it. And if they can be so active in the group, it helps them on their journey. And then some people decide, you know what? I’m so grateful to this group. It helped me get here. I’ve learned this and I’m done. And that’s okay.

46:26
And then in terms of getting people back to your site for emails, it sounds like you just occasionally post like a recipe or something that would genuinely help someone to guide them to your blog. And that’s where you grab emails and that sort of thing. Yeah, I don’t occasionally post a recipe every time I create a new recipe. I posted in the group and every time it leads back to my website, because I want people to have an option to print it for their own cookbooks. But then again, I want it I want it monetized. I want to be paid for my work. So everything I do leads back to my own site.

46:56
It’s just I don’t do that 100 % of the time. I know this is going to be really hard for you to this question, but if you were to kind of quantify your recipes versus regular posts, what would that percentage be? Well, recipes. Or, you know, links back to your website, period. Oh, link. OK, so. So like one in five. no. So I would if I’m answering questions.

47:24
I may answer 10 questions in the group and then I may post one or two recipes that day, one in the morning and one in the evening. Okay. And then if it’s, if it’s a new recipe or something new that was good information, not only would I share it in my group, but I would look at the rules of other Facebook groups. And if they allowed me to share my website and my recipe, I would share it there too, which is the actual key to

47:54
really growing your group is to share in as many like-minded groups as you can that allow that activity. Okay. Some don’t allow it. Like some want you to post a recipe, but they don’t want a link and they don’t want that. They want you to post the full recipe in there. And that’s not how I make money. So I won’t be part of those groups. Right. Let’s switch gears a little bit.

48:20
We’re coming close to the time, but I did want to talk about TikTok. What attracts you so much about to TikTok? And am I going to see dancing videos of you when I follow you? did one dancing video, but it’s just fun. I feel like I get like a dopamine hit every time I watch it. It’s quick content. I feel like I have ADD, so I grasp content very quickly. for the fact that it’s

48:46
10 seconds to 60 seconds and I can see it and digest it and boom, onto the next. That’s very appealing to me. It’s not, I think it goes down to a feel. When I log onto Facebook, it feels like, especially here lately, there’s been nothing but either political or hate or disgust or anger. There’s hardly anything positive and that gets to me versus when I’m on TikTok, it’s like,

49:12
I choose to follow certain people and it’s mainly food or fun or crafts or I feel like there’s just a total atmosphere change to where, you know, it knows what I like and it knows that I like positive and it’s quick. It’s quick content. as a content creator, do you see this as a really good platform for yourself? You know, I’m really, I don’t know. I’m up in the air in that.

49:42
Now that I hit 10,000, you know, you’re not going to get rich posting on TikTok. It’s very little, but I am seeing more people say, Hey, I bought your book. Hey, I really like your content. Hey, you’re the only one who explained it in such a way that I can understand. Where can I buy your books? And I’m like, these people, like you’re sharing stories, which you’ll be lucky if they lead you back to your website, but

50:11
I wanted a way to talk to people quickly. And I wanted that like, hey, let me blast this information out there. if somebody, and I’m visual, I’m a very visual learner, but I don’t like YouTube because that’s too time consuming and it goes too slow for me. So if somebody in the group is like, hey, like here recently, somebody said,

50:32
I’m doing keto, but nobody else in my family is doing it. How do you stay on track? Well, guess what? I did a TikTok on that. go and I grabbed the link and I put it in there. Hey, watch this. And they’re like, oh, thank you. I mean, you have that face to face. It feels like a face to face conversation. It feels like you’re giving them the answer in a short amount of time that doesn’t feel intrusive for them to go and read a blog post. And it’s quick. And then they remember you. They remember your face. Then they follow. And then they’re like,

51:00
Wow, you give great, where can I get your cookbook? It leads to like that. Do you find that Instagram is the same way? Or are you on Instagram heavily or no? I am on Instagram and I’ve never really gotten into Instagram. I think it’s because I just feel like it’s this fake life of beautiful photos and picture perfect stuff that I just.

51:24
that platform never appealed to me. So even though I do have a following on it, it’s simply because other people who I’ve hired have run it for me. Okay. So I don’t, I don’t. That makes sense. Yeah. Instagram does have that impression. Yeah. It has always for me and I’ve just never, I’ve never gotten into it. And there’s a lot of people that get into it to get sponsored posts and I can’t stand working for other people. So it never appealed to me to do that.

51:51
You know what, come to think of it, in a way, Instagram is like the complete opposite of what you stand for. Almost, right? Exactly. I want to be real and I want to, I want to, you know, it’s not always pretty and I want to tell you where I struggle and that makes it real and that makes it relatable. you know, I think you find your people, the people who you can relate to, which is what I really like, because I won’t relate to everybody. won’t, not everybody will like you and you’re not everybody’s person.

52:20
So it’s just a really good way to find your people. Yeah. Hey Jen, where can people find your cookbook? Where can they find your group if they’re interested in keto? Cause she will not let anyone in who’s not going to contribute to the group, but in case they are, where can they find you? You like keto and you like low carb recipes, then you can definitely find the page is keto friendly recipes.

52:47
And then the group is low carb inspirations plus keto friendly recipes. And if you happen to be a chaffle addict like I am, you can find keto chaffle recipes, but there’s so many groups that you can just go to facebook.com forward slash group forward slash slash chaffles. And that’s my group. the way, can you explain what a chaffle is and how you spell that? Chaffles, C-H-A-F-F-L-E.

53:14
And the reason why it’s called a chaffle is because it’s a waffle that you can make into many different things from breads to cakes to, you know, lots of stuff. And it’s cheese plus egg. So, um, cheese plus waffle is chaffle. yeah. And this is something I just learned right before this interview that I’m going to have because I’ve been hurting lately for variety. So I’ll show you how to do it. And then your website is.

53:44
lowcarbinspirations.com. Yeah. And then there’s a whole bunch of recipes. And I believe there’s an ecommerce store on there as well, right? There is. There’s a shop. Yes. And what do you sell in the shop since I have to extract all the information out of you, Jen? Yes, yes, I sell I do. I do have my cookbooks on the shop or links to them. I find that the best prices I think are on Amazon for the cookbooks. And then I do sell some digital products. I have some downloads. I have a keto starter.

54:12
video course. So if anybody really wants help and wants to take it at their own pace, there’s short videos, there’s a course to get them started. So yeah, there’s quite a bit of helpful tools in there. We do meal plans. They can get some digital download for meal plans if they really like to prep ahead of time and want to be successful. I know that low carb has really changed my life. And there’s no one that I trust more to teach it than you. Oh, you’re so sweet. Thank you.

54:41
And I really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks a lot. I appreciate you inviting me. Thank you. All right. Take care.

54:51
Hope you enjoyed that episode. Now when I went on the keto diet long ago, I actually lost 35 pounds in four months. The diet works and Jen knows her stuff. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequaterjob.com slash episode 351. And once again, I want to thank Postscript, 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. And SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash dv.

55:20
That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Clayview, 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 mywifecoupterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again, that’s mywifecoupterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Now we talk about how I use these tools in my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store,

55:50
head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.