Listen to my episode with Eric Holland from High Five Dad

Pete McPherson 0:00
Eric, welcome to the show.

Eric 2:59
Thank you. Glad to be on your show, finally.

Pete McPherson 3:02
So this is going to be a little bit of an experimental episode. And to kick that off a why it’s going to be a little bit experimental and what we’re going to talk about, Eric, I’m wondering if you might share with us how you felt a few weeks ago, or maybe in a month or two ago? I’m not exactly sure when you actually got promoted in your job, is that correct?

Eric 3:23
Yeah, I did couple about a month ago, just got promoted. And it was one of those weird, awkward type of feelings. Because in the back of my mind, when I got, you know, noticed, I was being promoted. And I had a conversation with my supervisor at the time, in the back of my head, was this idea that I may not be at that job for much longer, the the idea of quitting my job. And trying something online, has been there for a little while.

So it was, it’s kind of like this weird mix reaction where men your entire career trying to get promoted, get promoted. And then you get promoted. And then in the back your heads like, I don’t know if I’m going to be here much longer.

Pete McPherson 4:06
Sure. So you don’t have to share the name of the company you work for, but give us like a just a 32nd overview of what you did.

Eric 4:14
If I go into details, it may give a little bit too much. And you hit enter

Pete McPherson 4:20
Can we just say education,

Eric 4:21
Education. So education, and I actually worked in a department that had a number of things that got put under us.

So as I moved up through the ladder, more and more things got put in there. So it was like the learning management system, the gradebook platform, the assessment platform for the state. And then, in this most recent transition to more departments got added to us that would just, you know, add to the different elements, but it wasn’t a clear cut Job had more work.

Pete McPherson 4:55
Yeah. Okay.

All right, we’re going to come back and discuss this overall transition, and just a second. But fast forward to today, today’s Monday, when recording this, by the way, Friday, was actually your last job. So today is technically your first like week day, I normally would have been at work, but now I’m free. Or now I’m petrified. Or now I’m unemployed or whatever.

So I gotta ask you like, how are you feeling today? What did you feel when you woke up this morning?

Eric 5:21
It’s weird, because I guess you don’t know what you’re going to feel on that day, can read about it, you hear other people’s stories about it. And you don’t know how you’re going to feel when you wake up.

For me, like the morning routine was identical to what it was on a normal work day. I have two kids and a wife. So you know, got up at 530 took a shower, got got the boys lunch ready for school, help my wife out the door brought my one year old to daycare.

And then at that moment, it was because the daycare is like two minutes away from where I work. So it was kind of like, do I take the left? Or do I take the right.

And for me, it was the first time that I didn’t go that the other Street and I and I turned around and headed home. And it still hasn’t hit me quite yet.

I still are getting notifications on my calendar on my phone that you know, I have a meeting that I’m supposed to be at or people are at work just still texting me. They’re like, Hey, I didn’t see you. And I’m just like, I’m not there anymore.

Pete McPherson 6:22
Oh, gosh.

Eric 6:23
But it’s, you know, for me, it’s been in the back of my head for a while that I was going to make this transition. So I feel like it wasn’t one of those, you know, rash quick decisions, which I feel like if I did that I would have woke up like in night terrors. But I think right now, it’s just kind of like, I wouldn’t call it a vacation mode.

But I don’t think the reality is hitting yet that I don’t have a real job.

Pete McPherson 6:51
Interesting. So let’s backtrack a little bit. And why don’t you tell us about your blog, specifically, like two or three things I’m looking for here, Eric? Number one, just introduce it like, Who are you? Where can we find you to? I’d love to know when you started precisely. I think I know. But I know the listeners don’t. And then we’re actually going to transition into the transition, the transition of quitting the job but then, you know, moving this on, but really quick.

Why don’t you give us the lowdown on who you are? Where can people find you like what do you blog about? When did you start?

Eric 7:24
Yep, so my blog is highfivedad.com. And we really blog a lot about like personal finance and family and family tips. Really trying to give people dad’s family families a way to make money, save money, and just some helpful family tips out there.

As I was going through the blog today, because I don’t think I’d have done like a blog audit. And no while I was like, Man, this is a really crappy blog. Which is it’s funny because I’m, you know, it was getting prepared for the podcast going.

Alright, let’s look to see how great I am. And then Oh, man, I got some work to do. So the blog started back in, I think august of 2017. Okay, or maybe July 2017. So about two years ago.

And really, the story is funny, because it just goes to the the idea of the power behind Facebook and Facebook ads and Facebook ad targeting, you know, my two year old or three year old at the time, didn’t like to go to bed by himself. So you know, I would lay down next to his bed, you know, he would lay in his bed, and I lay on the floor, just kind of, you know, talking to them. And then well, he was going to sleep, I would be laying on the floor, scrolling through Facebook, and then getting hit with all these ads. And Bobby from millennial money man must have been targeting, you know, guys in the middle age, you know, looking to save money, make money.

And I would land on his blog, probably once a week, once every other week about how this music teacher, you know, quit his job, made this blog and started making money. And this is before Millennium money man like blew up to what it is today.

So this is before his courses and all that where he was still making, you know, decent 810 thousand dollars a month. And I was like, Man, what is this blogging world?

Right? And fast forward…talk to my wife is like, I think I’m going to start a blog. She’s like, what is a blog? Like?

Yeah, like, I guess when you’re not in the blogging world, you don’t realize that half the things that you search on the internet is a blog?

That’s like, No, no, it’s fine that, you know, I’ll do this, you know, maybe I’ll make a little bit of money and who knows where we’ll end up, right? And then fast forward two years, like, he just quit your job. Now you’re playing online, blogging.

How Eric has grown (and monetized) his blog so far.

Pete McPherson 9:48
Okay, so this is a great transition. Two questions for you, Eric.

The second one–tell you the second one first, just to keep myself accountable for actually coming back to it. I want to hear about the the pre planning, not necessarily what you’re going to do now that you’ve quit your job in order to grow the blog, or to do more freelancing or to make more money or to start your own business or whatever that looks like.

Not that.

But everything you did before actually turning in your notice, I want to hear kind of like what that planning look like, Okay, I’m going to need this amount of money in order to quit my job, or I need to have these things in place before I quit my job.

That’s actually bullet point number two. I’m going to ask you about that in a second. But right now, I want to hear how you grew the income because as I understand it, you’re making more than 1000 less than $5,000 a month from just the blog. Is that correct?

Eric 10:44
Yep.

Pete McPherson 10:44
Okay, tell me a little bit about how you’ve grown that the best two years.

Eric 10:48
So I may be one of the worst bloggers that you’ve ever interviewed.

As as, as doing you know, the site audit, I was like, you always end up comparing yourself to like other people out there. He’s got their things together. And I look at my blog, I’m like, man, I don’t have my things together like everyone else, which I think is is good for, you know, some of your listeners, because I think people who are, have their blogs polished and perfect. And I don’t think that’s real for some of those brand new bloggers out there.

Or people in year one or year two who think, man, I’m never going to make it. Yeah. So like, in reality, like, if you go back and look at like my blogging, I basically do everything wrong. You know, the idea that you you need the blog, you know, once a week, once or twice a week to get engagement. I don’t think the last article I posted on there, I think it was in like July.

And when you look back at how many articles I’ve done this year, I think it’s like six or seven. It’s not like I’m not the typical, like, Hey, I’m going to go write two articles a week, I’m going to blast my email list, I’m going to do this. If you look at like, the way that my blog has kind of grown, it’s like in Sprint’s, like, I’ll work two or three months, try a technique really, you know, intense, whether that’s writing two or three articles, whether that’s, you know, focus in SEO, whether that’s focused on Pinterest, and then for whatever reason, you know, blogger burnout, or life gets in the way, like I take the foot off the accelerator, but then I always come back and kind of like reflect like, did this work?

Or did this not work?

Pete McPherson 12:30
Okay, so you’re a terrible blogger, literally the worst I’ve ever interviewed. Totally joking. And you have done these little sprints you call it where you try these strategies out every now and then how, how specifically, has it monetize them?

Eric 12:46
Yep. So I was one of the early members of Pete 30 Day Challenge.

And you know, I, a lot of bloggers out there you jump in the first course or the second course that you see. And I was like, Oh, yeah, one of the first challenges that you had on there was, you know, ask someone for $1. So, you know, of course, I think everyone in the group like email J money is like, “Hey, I’m doing this challenge. Hey, can I get $1?”

Apparently, I was one of the first ones. And I sent him a message through I think face or rock star forum as like, “Hey, this is my idea. You have a dollars your logo with your face on it, would you give me $1?”

Pete McPherson 13:26
And I’ll put them on my Facebook or on my, on my website?

Eric 13:30
And he’s like, Sure.

So I made my first dollar there.

And then from there, I was like, once you get past the idea of asking people for money. It’s like this, like mental barrier, like, Oh, yeah, it’s $1.

So then, you know, over the next, you know, two months, it was like, All right, let’s try to find some other sponsors. So that was like my first, you know, adventure into making money on the blog was trying to get sponsors. So I worked a couple different companies, and you know, I landed a $500 sponsor, I was like, oh, man, this is really good.

Well, then you get to the point where, like, I’m not tired again. So you know, there are things that work, and then all sudden, like, I would get tired. And I’d be like, Oh, let me try this other thing. So I think in January of 2018, maybe February, I taken, you know, two or three months off, I hadn’t blogged at all had even logged into my, my Google Analytics hadn’t done anything. And then I came back to blogging, I looked at my Google Analytics, and there was a post in that was getting all this organic traffic from Google.

And I’m like, wait, I’m just getting free traffic, like, I’m not doing anything, I haven’t done anything. In three months, I haven’t promoted and on Twitter haven’t done all of this.

Now sudden, I’ve gotten at that point, three 4000 page views just for nothing. So I really began to, like, optimize that, that one post, and kind of play around a little bit with some SEO, just kind of see where it was going to go. In that one post, you know, went from 3000 a month to like 15,000 a month.

And I I knew just by being in that in the blog world, that media mind you needed, you know, 30,000 sessions or 25,000 sessions, something around there.

So I knew if I could get my my stats up that high, that I could start making money on on traffic, which is, it’s nice to have money just rolling in for not doing anything. So I spent about a month using Facebook ads to target and this, the the post I can point people to the posted is a dumb post, but because it has nothing to do with personal finance, but it’s about fast past it at Disney, you know, we live in just outside of Orlando. So we go to Disney.

So I have this, this hack that I call it that allows people to get a lot of fast passes, which if you’re Disney fan, and you want to get the most of your money, like it’s beneficial.

So I start targeting people who like Disney with this ad, and I’m getting, you know, half a penny to one penny sent a click. So I knew Yeah, Disney fans are crazy. Like literally, like, if you want to start a blog, do Disney blog, and just start targeting people on Facebook, they share it with everyone they know.

And there’s a ton of Facebook groups that they’ll share to like, I would go on to my Google Analytics. And I would have a spike of like 2000 people because they would drop it in a in a Facebook group. And all of a sudden, you know, everyone’s clicking, clicking, clicking, and then it would die. Because like the the post, the admin as a group would like kill it or something.

But just by using Facebook ads, I was able to grow my traffic to over the threshold needed for media vine. And then I pulled back Facebook ads, because I the whole goal was just to get to that, you know, 25 or 30,000 sessions, so that I can qualify for mediavine, and then I would start working on things that were more personal finance ish. Okay, so traffic right now.

And then I have a couple affiliate posts that are on the site that are using some SEO in some back linking that really kind of flush it out. So it’s about right now the income is about 70% traffic. So through media, vine and about 30% affiliate income.

What did the planning look like before his quit his job?

Pete McPherson 17:39
Okay, that’s awesome. Kudos to you, by the way. Well done, Eric.

So that second bullet point I spoke of earlier, as you’re you got a promotion, right. And you kind of have that weird feeling of like, Oh, this is awesome. I’m glad. But I don’t know if I actually want to be doing this forever, let alone the next two months, apparently. So what did the planning look like? When you’re giving the person you’re starting to sit down?

Maybe with your family and talking it through? What did the planning look like before you could quit?

Eric 18:09
Yeah, so you know, being in the personal finance space, we’re like Excel junkies.

And so I think, you know, over the last three or four months, I’ve created so many Excel charts with so many different scenarios of like, what could be what couldn’t be that, I think I was driving my wife crazy, like, you know, we would take our current level of income and say, well, we reduce it to this, and we cut out our savings, you know, what is the minimum that we need. And, you know, we’ve been blessed, that we’ve had the opportunity to, through the blogging income, and just through good budgeting skills, put away, you know, 20 or 30% of our income every month into savings.

So our entire idea, you know, what, before we got married, you know, we did the Dave Ramsey thing. Now, we still need both, that Dave Ramsey, you know, didn’t necessarily get my wife and I on this on the same page, in finances, but we’re at least in the same book, because she is a spender, and I’m a saver.

But being able to have those open conversations prepared us for all right, we need a savings, we need an emergency emergency fund. Because at any day, you know, you quit, or you can lose your job. And you’d want an opportunity to find the job that you want. Without just taking the first thing that pops up, or in this case, it’s given us the opportunity, you know, take a risk and take the you know, I call it an adventure to see what, what’s possible out there.

Pete McPherson 19:42
So just to clarify, and you don’t have to share your exact numbers, of course, but you’re not completely, like totally financially independent.

“I don’t, I don’t care ever again, if I make a single dime, like I’m set up.” You’re probably not there yet. Is that correct? You just have like a really good situation going from saving, you’re able to have an adventure, so to speak?

Eric 20:03
Yeah, definitely not fire whatsoever.

I mean, maybe the leanest of lean fires, that that’s out there. But no, I think we were in a good spot where, let’s say the blog crashed and the internet went down for the rest of the year, we’d be fine. And then you know, I’d go out looking for a real job.

Pete McPherson 20:27
Okay. So before I move on to going forward, like what does that plan strategy?

So obviously, worst case scenario is probably not going to have the internet’s not going to go down, you’re probably going to continue to make money and hopefully grow and make more money from the blog. Before that, though, Did I miss anything on the planning? So you guys saved? Obviously, having a, you know, I don’t care what you call an emergency fund, freedom fund, saving up to have a mini retirement or whatever, that is almost impossible to quit your job.

Without that, wouldn’t you say?

Eric 20:58
Yeah, I honestly, I think the two years leading up to this, the, because I think if you would have asked me two years ago, Eric, would you be willing to quit your job?

Just right then and there…And I would say no, you’re crazy.

But I think over two years of learning and realizing that, you know, the nine to five, the job, the career that people you know, you go to school, you go to college. And it’s like this idea that you have to have this job, you have to go down this career. Like, I don’t think I was ready at that point two years ago, just to say, No, I’m done with that. Right?

I think over two years, you just mentally prepare yourself for, hey, there are there are other things you can do in this world. There’s other other jobs you can do. There’s other ways to make money than what you’ve always traditionally thought we had just went on vacation for Fourth of July. And I looked at my wife, I said, you know, all these people around here, you know, they look generally pretty happy.

And they’re not doing what I’m doing. And I think it was that realization that if you’re not happy with where you are in your job, you can build a way out of that. And I think it just took me two years to one, save up and have finances, the finances to do it.

But then really that mental peace, like getting in your own head like now I can’t do this. I’ve, I’ve worked my entire career to get to this point.

Because the position that I’m stepping down from like, I’m at the top of where I’ve always wanted to be. And then sometimes you realize when you’re at the top, like the view, isn’t that great? Yeah, totally. I mean,

Pete McPherson 22:42
that’s like a good soundbite. I’m gonna put that at the top of the show there. I love that.

Before I talk about the plan. I this just came up not in my notes. I’m curious, though, will say that are other people out there listening who are at the top or not, they think they want to quit their jobs, like corporate job, their full gig and do other stuff with us blogging, freelance and starting a small business or all the above, like whatever that looks like, and will say there, they don’t have the freedom fund, so to speak.

How can YOU prepare to go full-time?

Can you give like a tip or two on how they might start today in preparation for like, two to three years from now?

Like, is there anything they can do in the next, like, 24 hours to just take that first baby step to getting to that point? Either financially or mentally? By the way?

Eric 23:27
Yeah, the simplest advice is start.

And what if one of the things I don’t know if I’ve shared with you is tried different things. Like blogging isn’t the first thing that I tried to do to make money off online. Like before, before blogging, like I had run Facebook ads, I was, I don’t know if you know, t spring where you can design t shirts.

And then you know, people buy them.

So before my blog, like I was outsourcing to for a specific niche, and then targeting that niche in with Facebook ads.

So making some profit there. But it was one of those things where it’s like, you know, I wasn’t, it didn’t really push me. And then before that I was trying something else and before, like, you start so that person who’s looking, they’re in a career right now, think about, you know, when you’re doing a side hustle, like, It’s alright, if you fail, just fail fast. And then try something new.

Like, don’t just give up because you failed on your first adventure. Now think of you know, whether it be blogging, whether it be you know, Amazon affiliate, whether it be Facebook, side, hustle, you know, doing ads, or podcasting, I mean, there are a lot of different ways to make money, try a couple until you get good at one of them like that.

Pete McPherson 24:47
And one more note from Pete here, lest anybody with shiny object syndrome, I.e. me, I’m your homeboy, Pete, by the way, all those out there with shiny object syndrome.

Yes, Eric is coming, try new things, but don’t do what I did, which is always look for a reason something failed, I would always look for now the sudden that that didn’t make a whole lot of money.

Even when I like had like, some real successes and my own online business adventures, I was always really quick to say, Oh, no, that wasn’t good enough, let me try something completely different.

And I think that’s actually a bad way to go about it, I think that a better way to go about it, is to try a bunch of different things.

But always be on the lookout for, oh, wait, there’s something here, this is a positive sign, there could be an opportunity here, look for small ways in which something does work. Rather than doesn’t work. I’m just gonna throw that in there. I wrote about this in a past blog post.

But there you go. Thank you, Eric.

What’s Eric’s current blog monetization strategy for making this work?

Switching gears a little bit, I’d love to hear a little bit more about your current strategy, the current plan now that you, you’re officially quit, today’s day number one of the the first day of the rest of your life, Eric, not to be too corny there. So what’s the plan? Give me the overall strategy now.

Eric 26:02
So like, really trying to be strategic in in one aspect, but then also trying to think, you know, big picture. So when you have a, you know, a real job, quote, unquote, real job, and then you’re doing a side hustle, you know, you have some income coming in from this.

And then you have your side hustle income. He, you mentioned that the internet may not crash and die, I completely agree. But what might happen is Pinterest stops loving you or Google stops loving your competitor comes in and takes your keywords and then your ranking goes down, and then your one income, cash flow is completely gone.

Pete McPherson 26:45
Right.

Eric 26:45
So I’m going to try to spread out and create multiple cash flows.

Because if one of those cash flows, you know, crashes and burns, it’s alright, because I have three other ones or I have four other ones, it’s coming that same mentality of you know, I have this real job, and I have this side income job, you know, you have to cash flows, if one of them were to go away, you still have the other one coming in.

So, you know, I kind of like bucket it out of different things that I want to do, to kind of bring in some of those. So, you know, high five dad is is like the one big project that, you know, if I, if I’m thinking about it in terms of my my job, like that’s my my main job now.

And so that’s, you know, increasing article output, obviously, researching keywords, and being able to find the affiliates that match my message.

And my group, because affiliate income will help, you know, not just focus on the traffic piece, and then really redefine the site to tell my story more, which you know, involves quitting my job and using the income, they based upon saving and budgeting that I was able to take this adventure, and then using that kind of that story, through email marketing, to really start segmenting my list to groups that want to make money, and then groups that want to save money.

Okay, from there, you can then use, you know, whether I’m creating a digital product, or creating a printable or, or some sort of other cash flow opportunity within there.

So now, you know, let’s say that there’s a group on my list that are all about making money. Well, you know, I can either pitch them all the different side hustle affiliates out there, so whether that’s one of your courses, whether that’s Bobby’s courses, or whether that’s whoever’s courses out there, you know, targeting there, or do I bring them in and kind of nurture them and, you know, help them create their own blog and do coaching.

So that that’s one like half, that’s one revenue source.

And then for the other group, you know, who said money, they, you know, they want principles, they want budget, guys, they want booklets they want, you know, maybe one on one coaching on how to save money.

So that’s one of those, you know, income flow, so that that’s where I’m going with high five dad. But then also, I think it’s important to have, you know, other sources of income. So like, these are my side hustlers for my blog now.

So that’s, you know, creating a traffic site, you know, something that may be that, you know, super passionate about, but I know will do really well in traffic, so that I can just, you know, just basically, you know, working on trying to get income from traffic. So it’s not super passionate, but I know it would work. So just outsourcing some article creation and being able to get some income there. And then also working on Facebook advertising.

So that’s been big.

For me, just personally, you know, some of the ways that made money early, and then some of the ways I was able to grow my blog, like, I know how to do that. And I know I can help you there, whether it’s bloggers or other local businesses, use Facebook advertising to grow their business.

Pete McPherson 30:15
Okay, so answer me this. Eric, are you planning to work on all these things full time now?

Like, are you going to be working roughly like eight hours a day going forward on this business?

Eric 30:27
I mean, since this is the only source of income of them bringing in, it will probably be the same amount of time that I would be at a regular job.

You know, so I, I’ve kind of sketched out a small idea of like, what my day would look like, just to make sure that I’m accountable. Because, you know, my wife is taking the adventure with me too. And I don’t want her to think that I’m just sitting on the couch all day. So really being passionate and really being focused on growing these different projects forward. I think, you know, working on it from nine to five, and then when the kids go to bed doing the same sort of hustle that was doing, growing, growing the blog, you know, once the kids go to bed, then continuing working on on that business until it is successful.

Pete McPherson 31:12
Okay, that’s awesome. I think we had responded to this. I’m gonna wrap this up here, Eric.

But do you want to do like a follow up call to just kind of discuss how like, how things are going show off? What an awesome blogger you became, since you were a terrible blogger, apparently, the worst of the interview, and now you can be an awesome blogger.

You want to do one of those? And if so, when do you think would be a great time to like schedule that in?

Eric 31:34
Yeah, I think that would be great.

I’m trying to think what would be a good time frame, whether we do in six months, or what we do in three months? But just kind of checking in on me to see, you know, did I think I made the worst decision of my career, and I’m regretting it now.

Or if things are all roses, and I’m out there, you know, making a million dollars, or I think it’ll probably be somewhere in the middle where it’s a struggle. But I’m seeing I’m beginning to start seeing sciences success. I’m down.

Pete McPherson 32:05
Yeah, let’s do like four months, four months, not quarterly. That’s like, a little bit too soon. But six months is a little bit too far. Let’s try like four months. I’ll pencil that in. Well, Eric, first of all, kudos to you, brother like this.

This is awesome.

I just love this story. In general, I’m really glad that you and your wife have kind of done a great job setting this up even before you, you really knew you were setting it up. So kudos to you. I think it’s super exciting. I know you’re probably going to get like some nervous breakdown, maybe like a week from now or something like that. But you’ll bounce back.

And I just also want to thank you for you know, being vulnerable, sharing where you’re at sharing how this went down. And looking forward to see where this goes.

Eric 32:45
Thank you.

Pete McPherson 32:45
Thanks for coming on.

Listen to my episode with Bethany Bayless

Pete
So, Bethany, right here, podcast movement. 2019 in Orlando, Florida. I have the lovely Bethany Bayless. Bethany. Welcome. Thank you, Pete. And thank you also for calling me lovely. I was very nice. Well, you are as are you? You’re right. Very lovely. Okay, so let me start with a story about you. Okay. Before we even met, actually, I saw you on stage. This was maybe fin con two years ago, maybe three years ago. I think it’s two years ago, kind of hosting the Plutus awards. And you were vibrant. You brought like humor, even like, not humiliating.

Bethany 5:14
Self deprication. It’s my specialty. Oh, yeah.

Pete McPherson 5:18
So much energy to the stage. I couldn’t help it be blown away. And the more people I talked to afterwards, they were like, just, like, crushed it. Like she was so good. So I gotta ask, like, Where did your presence on stage like come from is naturally amazing at this?

Or do you have lots of experience with that? Give me your like, I’m awesome. I have a presence background. Where’d this come from?

Bethany 5:42
I feel like it’s a much longer story. And like part of it is one that I like a conversation I have with my therapist as well, because it goes so deep. It goes so deep. But I, as a child, even my parents make a joke that I was born out of the womb with jazz hands.

And like, I was just like, “I’m here!”

And like, even at the age of two, I would be a toddler walking around. And once my parents tell the story all the time. And they were like, we’re missing Bethany. We don’t know where she is. Where did she go. And they went into this other room of the restaurant. And they see me going from table to table to table making them smile. And then I when I was done, my face just went from a smile to All right, I’m done here. Let’s go.

Like completely, that’s just always been who I am.

I also grew up in a military family. So we moved around quite a bit. And so it required me to make friends with people. So I feel like that developed my personality and a lot of ways of being comfortable in new situations of being comfortable in something that might be out of my comfort zone because I was frequently being ripped from my comfort zone.

And I when I was younger, I started getting into acting and getting into theatre and like that was my dream, right? Like, I wanted to be on Broadway, I wanted to be like the scene like my, I had like an Ethel Merman like Google, like voice. And I would always try to be the comedic relief, because I also found that the way for me to make friends is to make them laugh.

And making them laugh is something that always just connects you with someone. It’s like this humor that you share. And I always noticed that I had the ability to do that to make people laugh.

And so getting into the the humor roles was like I was typecast. Okay, in that, right? Like, that was always who I was. But that was also where I got a presence on stage.

Okay, fast forward many, many years, I wanted to be in radio, I wanted to do these things. And I had been working in a job that ended very abruptly and I had to go home. And I had to live with my family again, and my mom at the time, she’s been in this space longer than I have, for over 25 years. She’s done financial education, all of these things. And so I learned so much of what I know from her.

And we started these events together, where we would go onto military bases, and we would teach them financial education. And so she asked me like, hey, I need someone who’s been high energy to be an MC. Can you do this?

Because they had an event…I wasn’t there. I had to like go somewhere. And the US local talent, and the ladies are like, “okay, yeah, well, everybody, welcome. We’re really excited…”

She’s like, I need not that, like, I need high energy. These are military service members, they don’t want to be here. They are not having fun and financial education. Not the most exciting Disney World topic, right? Like, it’s not something that’s going to be exciting. So the very first time that I went on stage, I was like manic I was like I said, amazing, probably five, literally 500 times, like, it’s gonna be amazing, amazing. Amazing!!

it was just like, all the things I did horribly wrong,

right. But the energy was there, right. And so after doing a few of them, I kept I was able to start reading my audience, I was able to connect with them in like, a conversation of like, harkening back to the making people laugh and having this conversation and being able to make jokes and feeling like they’re on my side, you know, like, my audience is on my side, they want me to do well, they don’t, I don’t think audiences want to see someone get up there and bomb, like, that’s not a fun thing for anyone, you know, like, being nervous or being uncomfortable, they feel that energy from you.

And so I started we did about 52 events in the course of a few years. And it was just a lot of work, a lot of practice. And when the opportunity came up, I was like, You know what, this is way out of my comfort zone, like this is going to be the scariest thing that I think I’ve done up into this point. And which, which also includes having to speak in front of fully armed, like military members, which is a whole other story for another day.

But it was one of those things that I felt in my element I felt in my space. My audience were my friends, they were on my side, and I just had so much fun with it, you know, so much fun with it.

And I love it. That’s where my happy place is.

Pete McPherson 10:09
Okay. So I love this. Thank you so much.

Bethany 10:12
There’s a lot of backstory.

Pete McPherson 10:13
No, that’s perfect. Yeah, part of what I really wanted to talk to you about is, first of all, you’re a natural. I think anybody who’s seen you on stage and or interacted with you at these conferences in person has realized, you’re probably a natural at this.

You’re a funny person. You’re beyond comedy and making people laugh. You’re also an interesting person. If there’s anything we can say about Bethany is that she is not boring.

Bethany 10:38
Thank you so much.

Pete McPherson 10:40
Okay, so hang on. Oh, okay. No, no, I’m about to get serious here.

You are an Instagram three zone type? Yeah, yes, we are the performer is what they call us.

So part of what I wanted to get out of you and just talk about I don’t know, you don’t have to have any specific answers because I don’t either, but I want to talk it through how we met might be able to help other people listening to this who go to fin con or go to podcast movement, like the conference we’re at right now.

How they can be better at meeting. Like I said, like, be more funny be more interesting, but how can they? How they could do better at meeting people standing out being memorable?

Yeah, maybe Yeah. Or just otherwise making an impression. In person specifically, I think most people can kind of put on the show, when they’re behind the microphone there podcasting, or in their writing, they have time to think it through and kind of make things engaging or interesting in person is like, kind of a hold of a ballgame, right?

Bethany 11:36
Yes.

Pete McPherson 11:36
And you were excellent in person. So right off the bat, no questions. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of other people out there who might need to…

Who wants to stand out more at events, meet people easier? Make impressions with brands? Like Connect there? What are some of your initial thoughts here?

Unknown Speaker 11:53
My very first thought when you said that, because I I have had conversations with people who will come up to me and say, “Oh, my gosh, I want to have as much energy as you are. I want to be as funny as you are. I want to be you or like you or whatever.”

Pete McPherson 12:08
To be you…

Unknown Speaker 12:12
We’re gonna see like a bunch of people wearing red glasses. They like

Pete McPherson 12:17
her multicolored glasses. Yes.

Unknown Speaker 12:20
It’s one of my secrets. But

Pete McPherson 12:22
I have a secret to this called birthmark.

I didn’t realize until later in life, but that’s like one instant way to kind of stand out to people when they first meet me. They see a birthmark on my left cheek, which you’ve known me for well, an hour. It’s kind of invisible.

Bethany 12:34
You forget that it’s there.

Pete McPherson 12:36
But people stands out. Just like red glasses. You’re the only person here with a glass. Yeah. little secret sauce.

Bethany 12:41
Yeah, it’s a it’s a secret sauce, for sure. But I wasn’t born with these unfortunately.

Like a baby that and then he like with red glasses. Gonna be my T shirts one day. She’s like the red classes coming out of the womb with jazz hands. I can see it now.

But the very first thing that I think about, I remember going through this phase, not phase my life really of me trying to figure out like who I am, right?

I have had so many people come up to me and say like, you’re too much. You’re too this, you’re to that. And I’ve always just like, but that’s like, that’s always been who I am. I’m not being anyone but me. And you’re telling me that I as an individual. And as a person, I am wrong somehow. Right? And so it’s started this like identity crisis of like, well, then if I can’t be me, like, Who should I be? Like, who should I be like, who do I want to be like, What? What?

Where should I cut back? Where should I trim? Where should I edit and post?

Pete McPherson 13:44
Like, to appeal to more people…

Bethany 13:45
To appeal to more people? Exactly.

And it got to a point where I got so emotionally tied up with that identity of who? Who am I like the famous Zoo lander quote, and he’s staring into a pedal. And I’m like, really? Who am I and what makes me me and give myself permission to be that, like, if everybody in these this world were a bunch of Bethany’s, we wouldn’t have no voices.

As you can tell. We’d be running around like crazy people, and we’d all probably be over sensitive and getting mad at everyone. Because the thing is, I don’t want anyone to be like me. I want people to be like them. Yes. And I have had people come up to me there is a gentleman that’s in my Toastmasters group, I go to Toastmasters. It’s a realist speaking club, where it’s

Pete McPherson 14:32
podcast for another day. Oh my gosh.

Bethany 14:36
I highly recommend it.

Like cut to the chase. I highly recommend it. And my Toastmaster group is like a family. Right? We have like the weird and we have like the grandfatherly figures like my mom is like everyone’s mom, like my mom, I go to the same Toastmasters group.

And there’s a gentleman who I highly respect, and I highly revere, and he’s a very quiet, very reserved man. And that’s his personality. That’s who he is. But he is the most beautiful storyteller I have ever met in my life. And when he speaks, every single time, I get emotional, and I get moved, and I get touched by his stories and and the things that He is survived. He is an African American man who lived during segregation he lived during the everything that went down, he lived in Florida, look at the south where things were not.

He moved out to California and one of the one of the very first NASA New Yorkers who worked at NASA and even their encounter discrimination. He’s mentioned in the Hidden Figures book, like because of who he is. Could you imagine and he comes up he goes, I need your energy. I need your, your, your vibrancy. And I was like, please don’t do not be me be the best version of you and use those strengths. What are you good at? Are you good at storytelling? Are you good at connecting? Are you like a total nerd that if you see a dude wearing a Star Wars shirt, you are now best friends? Like Is that who you are? embrace that? Be confident in who you are? And then work it? Yes, work it however it is.

Pete McPherson 16:16
You know, you’re not actually the only person to ever have this conversation with me. I just remembered this last year. I think on Jillian from Montana. many adventures, my really good friend. Hello, Jillian..

Bethany 16:27
Hi, Jillian.

Pete McPherson 16:29
Thank you for listening to the podcast.

No, she told me this last year. I don’t even remember how we started talking about it. But she’s like, you know who I really like? I like the people who are just themselves. But more. So yeah, I use that, that I use that phrase a lot. Be yourself. But only more so yeah. And she was specifically talking about meeting some, some quieter people, some more introspective people and she had one person in mind. I have no idea who she was even referring to.

But this one dude was not only like a little shy, a little quiet. But he was really shy and really quiet. But for whatever reason, like when they talked and they like met each other and said hello and introduced each other. He was like, really confident in it. He wasn’t like shy, like scared and fearful. It was he was just a quiet, introspective. Yeah, slow to speak person, very nonverbal, intentional, which was like right up Julian’s alley. And she’s like, you know what, I just love reading people who are just themselves, but only only more, so I love it in themselves.

Bethany 17:29
I want to have a T shirt that says that, can we make those t shirts? That’d be awesome. That would be because I think that’s a beautiful way of putting it. And I think it also has to do with confidence and not letting others dictate what you should be doing.

You know, like, when people tell me I’m too much, or I have too much energy, or I’m too whatever. It’s like, according to your standards. Right? Like, I’m sorry, whose standards? Are we judging here? Because it’s not everyone’s standards. And my I had to also realize I am not everyone’s cup of tea. And that is just fine. Yeah.

Pete McPherson 18:06
Well, it takes courage to get past that point. Yes, by the way, especially as enneagram threes…

Bethany 18:10
Oh, my gosh, this is the conversation of my therapist, too. Okay.

Pete McPherson 18:17
Me too. Yeah, we are. We don’t like to be disliked and judged and feel like failures. Three is we don’t like that. But I do think that applies to just about everybody else in some degree. Absolutely. Especially introvert podcasters. And bloggers who come to these conferences, start meeting people.

Bethany 18:35
And here’s the thing, if you…one–it requires a lot of self awareness. Right. So I’m one of these people that I love learning about personality tests. I love learning about introverts and extroverts, and what makes us us and what I’m like and what, what I can do and how I can analyze those things about myself so that I know myself better, right DNA or Graham was a great tool for that. And I don’t want this to become an Instagram podcast, because I can very quickly look it up because I can just nerd on it all day long.

I love it because it has so helped me unlock why I do the things that I do.

And it gives me a little bit more perspective about who I am and how I can be the best me that I can be. And something else is like if you know that you are an introvert and like you’re going to this conference and you need your downtime, you need your recharging, don’t feel like you “should,” should be doing fill in the blank, I just want us to take that out of our vocabulary, like you should be doing what according to who, yeah, don’t think that you should be hate meeting people going on the exhibit floor, I think I should do this, I’m going to do that.

That’s not the best for you. If you feel like one day, you want to check the piece out. Like just just check out do nothing and go to a coffee shop or sit in your room, take a nap do whatever you need to do. So that you can be your best self and your you that you can be the do that and be strategic about it, plan it out in the future, you know ahead of time, this is the day these are not the sessions I want to go to this is a day for the time I need as who I am.

Pete McPherson 20:13
And let me just actually, that’s just such an important point in general, I want to underscore that for a second. A lot of people, they they understand, oh, I need to be meeting people, oh, I need to be social. And that’s fine.

And then they kind of reach that breaking point. As an introvert, I know exactly where my breaking point is and what it starts to feel like because I literally have trouble smiling at people who are talking to me anymore. I’m just like, you can’t see me right now I’m drowning. That’s why like, I get to that point. And it took me a long time to realize this, I am doing myself a huge disadvantage by staying out there. By out there. I mean, like walking around conferences, meeting people, or even attending sessions for that matter in two different ways.

One, I look like more of an a-hole, not smiling and engaging and talking with people the way I can when I’m on my game. And then number two, I’m not setting myself for future success. After I go and get my rest time.

Now I’m in this like extended period of half fastness. Yes, if that makes the sound, I would guess I should go back, I should map for an hour or just stare at the wall for an hour, which is usually what I end up doing. And when I come back, I’m like so much more refreshed and extra get on my game again.

Bethany 21:20
100% there have been times that even I like I look at conferences.

Let me just tell everybody, what I love to do is go out, drink with my friends hang out to wild, crazy things end up not going to bed till three or four o’clock in the morning. It’s a very common conference thing, especially when you make really great connections. And especially I have started to realize, you know what, I probably shouldn’t do that if I’m working at a conference.

And it’s not it’s not because I don’t want people to judge me or things like oh my gosh, that girl. It’s more like if I want to be the best that I can be. I need to plan like, okay this night. Totally. Let’s do it. This night. I am I have accountability. And they are saying Bethany, it is time for you to go to bed.

We’re over, we’re done. Go do what you need to do. Because again, it’s the same thing. I want to be the best that I can be.

Pete McPherson 22:12
I like that. Let me ask you this, then let’s this will start to transition. One thing you said I don’t even remember what you said was like 10 minutes ago now. But I made a mental bookmark to come back to it. And that was kind of he didn’t say the words intentional, but kind of be intentional about what it is you’re after from these conferences. I said exactly like that, but you’re kind of hinting at it. So let me actually just start with you. from a personal standpoint, you well now you do some more speaking and emceeing and or hosting, if you will.

But outside of that specifically, what are some of your goals to be for Justin con, or just podcast movement or conferences in general? Like why do you come to these things? What are you aiming to get out of it? Well, search term and long term.

Bethany 22:55
This is a great question because conferences are my favorite.

Like they are the best best thing ever. And I’ve my I feel like my conference, culture, my conference, attitude etiquette, whatever has evolved over time, the very first conference I ever went to, is a fun story. There’s a press conference I ever went to I was 12 years old.

My mom took me on a business trip. She wanted me to act as like her personal assistant, but also as a way for me to kind of like interact in this world. Spend time with her and see. And she goes alright, Bethany, I have a book signing on Friday at noon. Your one job, this entire conference is to get people in line for that books. I mean, I had a job ahead of time though, right?

I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. And then I like hit the floor. And I just made friends with everyone.

Like I walked around the exhibition hall. And like, every single booth, I stopped, I talked to them. I told them about what my little 12 year old life was like, and I just became best friends. I was like, by the way, my mom is having a book signing, will you come to that book signing. And she kept telling me that was the one of the longest lines out of any book signing in the entire conference that that year.

And every other person goes, “Oh, I met Bethany. Bethany was here. She’s the one who told me to come to this. She’s the one who be here.”

And so that was like my first my first realization of a conferences, you are there to connect with people.

And that is something you cannot do anywhere else.

Like I can’t do that at a coffee shop. Like Could you imagine like, if I went up to a stranger sitting in a coffee shop? Oh my gosh, tell me all about you, please. I want to do everything. Like that might be a little. But yeah, a little. What is my word stalker eat like it’s a little too much. But in this environment, everyone is waiting for that. Everyone wants that they want to connect with people want to see where things can lead. That’s my number one thing when I go to a conference is connecting with people is my number one goal.

My number two goal is learning things. So things like at fin con or podcast movement. I love learning about this craft that I do. I love how I can get better. But you know what I learned through meeting people to Yes, so it’s two goals. And if I miss a session that I really wanted to go to that is okay. Because either one, I can watch it later, or two, I don’t need it anyway. And I’m going to find that out through these relationships that I’m having through connecting with people. And the thing is that I wanted to add really quickly is that when I meet people, is very rarely that thing where I go up to them and just like Tell me everything which happens.

But I think some of the most relationships.

I’m really bad at that sometimes, especially if I’m alone, I usually have I have a friend with me to be that outgoing, no lie.

Um, but I also realize that the times that I meet people are the stupidest silliest, little ways. And those become some of my best relationships that I’ve ever had.

One, I mean, like, maybe I’m standing in line to get a drink at the bar. And like the person in front of me, I’m just like, oh, man, this line is taking forever, like, whatever, and just strike up that conversation, and then develop a friendship have that genuine connection. And then don’t talk about work right away. Like, I want to know you as a person, like you have value as a person, besides anything that you do, because I want that for me.

You know, I don’t want people to go look at my numbers and be like, Oh, well, she’s not worth my time. Right.

Like I one of my my biggest annoyances is when people meet me ahead of time, discount me, if they don’t know who I am, or whatever, like, look at a place like think on, they discount me they ignore me, they blow me off or whatever, because I can’t do anything for them.

Then they say me emcee. And then they’re my best friend afterwards, that’s not going to be my friend.

The person who’s going to be my friend is the girl that I met in the tea line today, when we both had a thing of tea, and just connected because this like, stupid is like little like, Oh my gosh, this honey is too sticky or like something like that.

Those are the people I love connecting with. And those are the people that I will talk to you afterwards. Because you have value, apart from what you do. You have value as a person who you are, despite how many followers you have on Instagram, despite how many podcast downloads that you have, you are valued for who you are. And I want to treat other people that way.

Because that’s how I want to be treated. And that’s, you know, a very old rule that people have. And ultimately, that’s my biggest goal, going to conferences is connecting with people learning from them developing relationships that are not only good for now. But those relationships I’ve made have helped me grow in my business. They’ve helped me grow as a person, they’ve helped me mature, to become just the best version that I can be even more.

Pete McPherson 28:04
Okay, can I chime in? You said like three things that like, I don’t have any notes in front of me, which is usually a bad thing, because I’ll forget things like

Bethany 28:15
Just write on the table. They don’t need it. Like a white linen tablecloth,

Pete McPherson 28:22
No. So I I’m gonna try to get to these three bullet points, because I think they’re pretty low hanging fruit for most people who don’t consider themselves rock star like connectors, right? Either super extroverted or super good at when, when people are.

Three things. One, all these conferences, you’re going to get the question like, tell me about your blog. What do you do about your business, whatever, that’s great. That’s fine.

If you’re not a super Rockstar connector, if you don’t really want to talk for like 10 minutes about your thing. So a lot of people don’t, they’ll start off and then pretty quickly, they’ll be like, a little introverted, or I don’t know this is going Am I just randomly my babbling? Yeah,

yeah. One thing you can do is just ask questions. No one does it. Okay. Everybody knows this. This is like the most blatantly “thanks Pete. I’m glad I’m listening to this podcast. Learn about other people ask questions to other people curious and other people.”

And yet, it’s funny how we catch ourselves. Like, I’ve been babbling for seven and a half minutes now. And oh, this is awkward now, because I just realized it. And now I don’t know what to do. And now just coming to these conversations, new people, especially like new connections, especially old friends, you know, I have to do it as much, but new people especially ask questions.

Listen. Let me say that again. Listen, like actually, listen, not like checking out looking for Pat Flynn walking around the dance floor, because you want to get as like selfie all around,

Bethany 29:49
which I want. I’m looking for Guy Raz right now.

Pete McPherson 29:51
I’m looking for Guy Raz too. Is he supposed to speak like tomorrow or today?

But ask questions. So easy, but people just go to and by the way, you don’t ask questions about their business, you can ask questions about their tea, or their red glasses or their gum. And you know what? It’s not weird. No, it’s not weird. In fact, it’s interesting.

Bethany 30:09
So I love this because this is a classic art of conversation tip. Yes, it is an art of conversation. And my mom has this role. And I’m totally outing her right now.

So everyone’s going to know, but we’ve talked about on her own podcast, so that’s okay. But she has this thing that she calls the 20 question game. And so it’s the 10 question game. But sometimes she gives a lot of grace and extends it to a 20 question games before. I mean, every once while she’s like, extended to the 50 question game, and they still failed.

But the 10 question game, if she’s having a conversation with someone, and she has asked them 10 questions about themselves. And they have not asked her one question about her to realize is that might not necessarily be an interaction or a connection that she’s interested in having. Because they, they can come get out of themselves and ask about someone else.

Does that make sense?

Pete McPherson 31:04
I think so.

Bethany 31:05
And so I’ve always noticed that I’m asking a lot of questions. I’m, you know, I’m interested. But are they paying me the same respect? Right? are they paying me the same interest and, and the curiosity in order because relationships are a two way street?

And if we can’t do this at the very beginning, then I don’t know if there are some people who never asked question about me. Yes. And it’s okay, I’m not self absorbed, maybe I don’t know. But it’s one of those things that is a given a take. And if we can’t give and take even in that, it’s just then it’s not a good sign for the future.

Pete McPherson 31:39
And it’s also one of those things where you don’t want to spend the entire conferences one person that’s like an extreme, but you also don’t want to spend like 45 minutes with one person. If you feel that’s the vibe.

You have a tip, I ready for this. I’m so ready for this is not even so, I actually don’t know if I would encourage people to do this. This is my secret sauce. Gonna be open to the public. I don’t really want to share.

Bethany 32:00
We’re spilling all the tea. You know, my guts.

Pete McPherson 32:02
This is my conference hack. Okay, this is for introverts, mostly, but extroverts could use this as well.

You will find yourself undoubtedly, in a conversation with somebody who you do not want to be in a conversation. Maybe you need to go to the men’s room. Maybe you see Bethany walking across the floor. Say hey, what or maybe it’s just super awkward. And you’re done. You’ve asked your 10 questions this person’s like rambling on about the grandmothers podcast started in 1982. Anyway, get away. You ready for the tip?

Bethany 32:32
So ready.

Pete McPherson 32:34
If you grab anybody nearby and introduce them and then back away slowly.

Bethany 32:39
Oh my gosh, I’ve done this so much. I did it to my friend Lacey three times the same person. Okay, well, that’s just so mad at me. Like you’ve already introduced.

Pete McPherson 32:50
Yes.

Bethany 32:51
So, but it is so good. That’s a great tip.

Pete McPherson 32:55
You will be known as a connector. Yeah, a whole who just walked away slowly backwards. But introduce people and connect people. It’s, it’s actually, it seems like a little bit of a whole thing to do when I present it like that. Like, if you don’t talk to this person. just introduce them to somebody else and back away, but it’s actually still a good thing. It’s beneficial for all parties involved.

Bethany 33:13
So is that what happened when you pulled over you know that one guy that one time and you’re like, “All right, bye.” I’m sorry.

No, that wasn’t?

Pete McPherson 33:26
Oh, actually, I gotta wrap up the talk show guy who’s letting me podcast he just gave me the the wrap up saying Okay, so I know it’s a little weird. Let’s do a round two sometimes soon.

Yeah, I think I should get this podcast episode up before I thought this would be super beneficial for people. I need to do that. I want to make that happen. Bethany, where can people find you? Besides on the expo hall?

Where can they find you on the internet and connect with you?

Bethany 33:52
I absolutely love connected with my people. Again, it’s my favorite thing so please find me at The Money Milhouse is our podcast, but if you want to connect to my personal brand, is that ways if you want to connect with my personal page, go to at Bethany Bayless on Instagram. That’s the number one way I love connecting with you.

Pete McPherson 34:10
Okay, at Bethany Bayless on Instagram. That’s right, The Money Milhouse podcast. go download it.

Bethany 34:15
Thank you so much, Pete.

Listen to my episode with Krissy Eliot

Krissy 3:35
Thanks, Pete. Happy to be here.

Pete 3:37
I am happy to have you on as well. So is it okay, if I just start off by reading a little bit of your backstory?

Krissy 3:45
Oh, my God, of course.

Pete 3:46
Okay. So you had sent me a few emails quite regularly. It would be like I think like, a whole couple of hours by itself. Just me being curious about some of the writing gigs and journalism gets you’ve helped in the past. And we probably won’t have time to discuss all that. But I do, bro. Throw it out there only because I find it fascinating. I’m fairly certain I’ll find you fascinating. Everybody else will as well. So I’m just gonna read some of these out.

First of all, Bigfoot. You have a Bigfoot blog slash obsession, which I’ll let you give us some, some details about and we can rant on a little bit. You have also kind of gotten into journalism. Almost by mistake, I think you said like you, you studied Film and Media.

But you went to be a sex columnist at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Bay Area reporter if I remember correctly, and some other gigs.

And you have since moved on to working for a company which we don’t really want to name here on this podcast for just confidentiality reasons, but you now do even more journalism, I guess, but also a little bit of marketing and copywriting. And I don’t know if you’ve done a lot. That’s what I really wanted to say here.

My first question is just want to like warm everybody up Bigfoot. Where did this obsession come from? And how did you end up like writing about this? A lot.

Krissy 5:08
Okay, so my Bigfoot origin story is okay, so it started when I saw a film festival sign at the Balboa Theatre in San Francisco Bigfoot Film Festival, Bigfoot Bonanza, actually, and my boyfriend is super into the X Files and all this stuff.

And he’s like, Oh, we should totally go and check out this Bigfoot saying, I’m like, All right, let’s go. So I didn’t particularly believe in Bigfoot. When I went in. I thought it was kind of a bunch of crap.

But when I went in, and I listened to the speakers talk before their films, and all these people who are enthusiastic about Bigfoot being a possibility. When I left, I believed even less.

Pete 6:02
That was unexpected there. Okay. Yeah.

Krissy 6:06
Yeah, so for a while, I was just like, this is ridiculous. But something about it hooked me. And at the time, I was an editor, California magazine, which is UC Berkeley’s mag.

And so my beat was kind of UC Berkeley. Well, while googling Bigfoot, I figured out that Grover Krantz who graduated from Berkeley and his anthropologist, well known anthropologist, stead now, but he was the first scientist to come out in support of the search for Sasquatch. And he was an amazing character. And I just absolutely fell in love with him. He, he had sympathy for the believers. And he really got into it. And he just dedicated his life to it.

So I got obsessed with him. But then I started going down this rabbit hole, I started talking to these other scientists who are saying, actually, it’s not that crazy that Bigfoot could be a thing, which just blew my mind. I just kept going and going and going. And I had written four articles in California magazine on Bigfoot.

And it just blew up online.

I think, actually, probably to date. These are published, maybe a year and a half ago, they’re still some of the top articles for California magazine on the site, people are interested. And they started getting all this fan mail. From all these people who believed in believe went to Berkeley, you know, academics, not academics, and they were like, your writing is really amazing.

We’ve never seen Bigfoot covered in this way, you know, you should do something with this. You should write about this more, you should write a book.

And I was like, You know what, I think I’m going to do that.

So I started this blog. I called it hotalien.com The reasons for that I won’t go into now, but I’m just really into, like, strange things. And I just wanted away to be able to write about this stuff, without an editor somewhere telling me “Oh, no, this is ridiculous. You shouldn’t write about this,” which is something I ran into a lot.

Also, I just want no filter. I want to write about Bigfoot, filter less,

Pete 8:23
Actually have a takeaway, based on what you just said.

And I told this to a lot of people that feel like constraints somehow, when it comes to like, their own blog, and like the topics they write about, because they’re thinking about SEO, and like, oh, Google’s gonna don’t like me, if I don’t talk about this, or, oh, you know, I’m not gonna be able to attract people, it’ll niche down or do whatever, which is fine.

And maybe those things are true. But more often than not, I’m like, this is your website and your blog, and you actually get to run it however the heck you want.

That’s like, incredibly freeing, liberating, I don’t know. But what I was gonna say, and I’m talking to the audience, now, look up to the camera here.

One of the reasons I will wanted you to come on when I read those emails, and I learned about the booklet content, as well as just your background in journalism, something you said stuck out. And you actually said it right before we start recording as well. Hang on, I wrote it down here.

“Talking about more complicated stuff, and making it less complicated and less boring.”

And the tagline to hotalien.com, I’m gonna curse here. Serious writing weird ship. Something I was intrigued by was all of the almost like crazy topics was not crazy. But it’s just not what you would normally think of when you think of just normal journalism, or even, you know, the people listens podcast, who run their own blogs, more complicated stuff. In your current day job. Again, we will discuss what that is. But it’s like, it’s, it’s not Bigfoot.

You’re writing about very serious things, in my opinion, but a very technical things for that matter, as well as, as well as sex as well as that other stuff. And writing about it in such a way that like appeals to people and appeals to the masses, and a lot of cases. I think that’s an incredible talent. And that’s part of the reason I have you on.

So just want to tell the audience that and share it with you as well.

Krissy 10:14
Well, I appreciate that. But also, we can say I am writing for an aerospace company. Okay, so I write about aerospace and rocket science,

Pete 10:25
rocket science, I like that.

So Krissy, where do I want to start, this is really fun. You also sent me like a bunch of things you could talk about on the podcast, which I literally just copied and pasted, because they were all pretty good.

There’s like five bullet points I kind of wanna talk about, all related to that idea of like, translating stuff that people may not care about, or may not even want to read about, etc, or might feel intimidated or overwhelmed by, and then making that something cool and entertaining and engaging. I just wanna let you know, that’s the theme of this podcast episode here.

So I’m going to read what you said. And then this is bullet point number one here, you wrote “but I could talk about journalism, and how to write about weird topics and strange subcultures and a credible way that will earn you respect,” as you said, and how to do the exact opposite of what your mother and elders tell you to do, and to succeed.

I like that said, it’s but let’s, let’s get back to the first part here.

So how, if you had to write us a little blog posts live right here on the podcast, how to take weird topics, or strange subcultures or even Southern like, super complicated stuff, and write the right about them in a credible way that will earn your respect. What would be the couple of tips that you would give us for that?

Krissy 11:37
Well, number one, leave your opinion out of whatever you’re writing.

And for the sake of journalism, so journalism is supposed to be I know, it doesn’t happen a lot. Now, the way things are going, but journalism, supposed to be facts.

And that’s it. And learning the difference between opinion in fact, is something extremely crucial to conveying the truth. If you show any little bit of your opinion, in a subject that might be considered, “ridiculous,” like Bigfoot, people are going to automatically think that you are an unreliable narrator. So what you want to do is make sure that if you are inserting an opinion, it’s an expert opinion. For example, a folklorist who’s trained, and you know, an example for Bigfoot.

Or a scientist that has actually tested some suppose the Yeti hairs that didn’t turn out to be Yeti, you know, make sure they’re speaking, they’re being quoted, they’re saying the opinions, not you. That’s one piece of advice I would give so that you can stay credible.

The other thing is, you would be really surprised how many studies have been done, that are scientific, or academic about the craziest stuff, you would just never even imagine, there, you can find support for pretty much anything.

You know, it’s just, it’s not. So I would say, do your research, make sure that anything that you’re saying can be linked back to another source? and preferably a credible source? of question?

Pete 13:29
I have a question. Do you also translate both of those things?

Actually, now that I think about it, both using research and other people who are authorities on their subjects or expert opinions or whatever, on your own blog as well? Like, I understand the journalism bit of it, especially if it’s not public information, but you know, what I mean, it’s, you’re expected to give the whole truth to facts and that sort of stuff.

But do you do that on your own blog as well?

Krissy 13:54
I have pieces that are explicitly journals and pieces on my blog, I have made three of those up right now. That, and then, but there are others that are more like a, you know, an opinion column. That’s a different, that’s a completely different thing.

When you’re when you’re reading a newspaper, and you’re reading, you know, you see an opinion column, that’s not necessarily the most journalistic if they’re trying to convince you to do something, then that’s not objectivity. Right?

You know what I mean? That’s just not the what I like about the blog is that I can put my opinion in if I want to, but in terms of, of getting people to trust you as a credible source, just on that subject alone, if you want to start writing about something strange, or you want to, or if you want to write about something really complicated, you know, you have to kind of hold yourself back a little bit.

Pete 14:55
Which is funny, by the way, for all the people out there listening who are trying to be influencers, I don’t really like that word. But what I really mean is they have their personal brand involved and their platforms, whatever the heck it is they’re doing.

It’s funny how like, authority works.

In fact, I think I saw somebody who actually referred to this topic as authority leaching in quotation marks, mainly saying that when you cite reputable sources, when you share research from other people, you know, anything to do with, as long as it’s like, you know, good stuff, and not completely full of crap and fabricated, it actually gives you more authority as well.

So if I were to write a blog post on ABC topic, and I literally did no original research on my own, I literally shared none of my own, like, original advice, or life lessons, or technical values or whatever. I can actually leech authority from other people.

By the way, that’s how I’m, like, super famous for the Do You Even Blog podcast because I interview cool people? And then that authority is like, leached on me. Just something for everybody to think about. That’s all I wanted to say.

But going back to more complicated technical subjects specifically, what about that? Because I feel like that’s probably like a completely different question.

By the way, Krissy, but when it comes to translating super complicated stuff, technical topics, and making it not boring, or readable, do you have any tips for that as well?

Krissy 16:24
Yeah. So in my time, as a journalist, I’ve interviewed a lot of scientists, I’ve written about, you know, things with biology, psychology, aerospace, all this stuff.

And what I found that helps me write in a way that’s palatable to a general audience is when I, when I listened to a scientist talk, they’ll use a lot of jargon, usually, stuff that the general public just doesn’t understand.

But I kind of get it because I read a study before I interviewed them, or whatever, I did some bad background research. When they’re talking to me, they’ll use all this jargon, I’ll take, I’ll take the notes. And when I go and sit down to write a piece, it’s very tempting to just take what they say, take their jargon, and move it over into my piece.

Because this type of jargon isn’t used in everyday life. Okay. But what helps me is sometimes I’ll speak aloud, me explaining it. How would I explain this to myself in my own voice? And then that way, I’m able to sort of say, okay, actually, mine’s better.

What I did what I just said was better. They may sound smarter than me. But nobody else is going to get it. If I write it the way that they do. So there’s that. And I’m not afraid…

Pete 17:48
By the way, My takeaway there is that probably applies to just about every industry and niche and topic and measurable By the way, even even parenting. I was on a yes, I was on apparently blog. Yesterday, the day before.

And I was reading about some disorders, not disease disorders, or whatever. And there was, like so many acronyms in there. I was like, I gotta Google all of these, because I have no idea what this person is talking about, just as an example. But yeah, you’re right, not just aerospace either. Like, that’s just super scientific stuff. That’s pretty much everywhere blogging included. I’ve been accused of that myself in the past on my own stuff. So I’m sorry, keep going. I interrupted.

Krissy 18:27
No, um, the other thing that I was gonna say is, I’m not afraid to ask really dumb questions.

You read a study, and you think, Oh, I understand this. But you don’t. You, you talk to them and you realize, but you’ve completely misunderstood the whole thing. And you realize that by asking them really basic questions to make sure that you understand, and that you understand it thoroughly. It’s not your job.

As a journalist, it’s not your job as a non expert, to sound like the smartest person in the room. In fact, people will be super flattered that you’re taking the time to be thorough, and making sure that everything is accurate.

Scientists get misquoted and misrepresented all the time. It is extremely frustrating for them. And the way that the news is set up now, do you know about the Cuban cricket crisis?

Pete 19:22
I do not. I don’t know anything about the news like whatsoever? Because I like I have to tune it out in 2019. So I don’t I don’t watch us anymore.

Krissy 19:30
No, I don’t blame you.

Pete 19:31
Tell me about the Cuban cricket crisis.

Krissy 19:34
So basically, there was this crisis where a bunch of officials in Cuba claimed that they were victims of what could possibly be a sonic attack.

And they recorded the sounds that they heard. And for a while the news blew up with this is possibly a sonic attack, blah, blah, blah, which it could possibly be, but we don’t know. But it was crickets. So here comes the kicker.

So a scientist at Berkeley, he looked into it, because he’s cricket expert. And he listened to the sounds and he was like, This sound, they heard his crickets, he’s like, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they weren’t victims of a sonic attack, because they all had these strange symptoms that lasted for like weeks, months, whatever.

Some had headaches, some had memory loss, they did test and there were brain, there’s brain damage. There’s all this crazy stuff.

So just because some of them heard crickets, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a sonic attack, right. But there were a bunch of headlines in “reputable,” news sources that said the sonic attacks were crickets.

But he was pissed. Because and rightfully so. Because that was they were taking what he said and misrepresenting it for their names.

Pete 20:58
You mentioned headlines, which one come back to? That’s one of my questions below because I found your your prompt for this interesting.

But going back one second, do you have any questions that you find yourself asking a lot? Or is it? I know some questions could be very specific, like follow up questions or whatnot, but and all of your, I guess interviewing experience, do you have like a set of questions that are kind of like some go tues just in case you need to, like, dive in and learn a little bit more, or even make the guests feel like they’re being heard, like, do kind of develop like report or empathy or whatnot?

Do you have any, like, favorite questions that you find coming up again, and again and again?

Krissy 21:43
So I have one question that I always ask at the end of every interview. And that is, is there something that I should have asked you, they didn’t ask you, like down?

And usually, and this is also a test, not just the person I’m interviewing, but it’s a test of how good journalists, they say you are very thorough. And that’s, that’s probably because I don’t generally have general questions. I am somebody who over prepares for everything. Sometimes it can be good. Sometimes it can be really horrible. Just spend way too much time on something that I didn’t need to spend that much time on.

But it allows them to also put themselves put themselves into my position. It’s like, what would a what would somebody who’s not an expert want to know?

Pete 22:36
That’s a good question.

Krissy 22:37
Yeah, I feel like it that works really well for me.

Pete 22:39
Okay.

So I didn’t write this down beforehand. But I just kind of thought of it. So you have been a journalist, columnist, writing and a whole bunch of different aspects and blogging or whatnot. I’m curious now. And if you don’t have an answer, that’s totally cool.

What do you want to be when you grow up? You it sounds like you’ve sounds like you want to be like a journalist to your core. Is this correct? Like, what do you want to do in the future?

Sorry, if that’s like a weird question to ask,

Krissy 23:10
no, no. So I’ve done, I worked in production right out of college, because that’s what I went to school for. I thought I wanted to be a screenwriter.

And I did that a little bit. But then I was like it now. And then I was a model for two years. That was my like, professional, like runway and stuff. That was awful, would not recommend to anybody did that just to make some money for a little bit wasn’t worth it. Then after that, I just decided I was going to be a journalist. And I moved across the country from Maryland. And it’s like, I’m going to write a sex column and happened and then then I was a serious side.

Pete 24:04
Hang on what triggered that? Like what in your head and Maryland was like, you know, what? journalism, dear to me was a specific event, school class, anything?

Krissy 24:14
Well, it’s specifically sex journalism.

And the reason for that, oh, there’s so many reasons. so complicated the human mind and the interest in sex. But I had somewhat of a conservative upbringing. And I thought I was a lesbian for a while. It’s all very, very exciting stuff.

But I was just like, sort of confused or whatever, about the whole thing. And I had a really odd relationship with sex because of some religious aspects of my upbringing and all of that. And I also had really bad sexual experiences. And I was like, Is this it? Because I’m, oh, I would listen to you. These “sex experts,” people who know all about sex, sexologist, whatever, and they will sometimes talk about sex like it was a Shangri La.

It’s just like, it’s where you’re going to find all the secrets to life?

Well, let me tell you, it’s not. It’s just not.

As somebody who wrote about kink and all these freaky sex stuff for two years in the Bay Area, I can tell you, it’s not. But yeah, I got really interested in it. And I just got really into subculture, like the subculture of sex, and the king people and everything because they were so different than what I had grown up around. And I wrote one piece, one long form piece for a small publication.

When I went to the orgasmic meditation conference, run by one taste, the name of the company, one taste, called by many of the people who worked at one taste and participated in one taste shenanigans. They call it a cult, basically, it was called the cult by many of them.

Anyway, so I went to a conference for three days, and I participated in this, “orgasmic meditation.” It was not to go into it. I’m trying not to go beyond pG 13. Let me just say, right. I wrote a piece about this.

And I had no previous journalism experience. And I decided to reach out to the San Francisco Bay Guardian, because I thought that they were really awesome. I said, I noticed you haven’t been writing about sex lately. Do you want me to maybe cover some events?

And the editor said, yeah, this is great. Do you want your own column after reading my one piece, and I said, that would be fantastic.

And so then I just got a sex column. And that was great. But then I kind of burned out on that after a couple of years. writing about kink and sex can be saucing, especially if you’re participating it, participating in it and writing about it from a first person perspective. Every week, you’re seeing something crazy, that you’ve never expected before. Again, won’t go too deeply into it. You everybody who’s listening can look them up all the articles.

But beware, you can’t read some of the things you’ll read.

Pete 27:22
I love this. This is fascinating. I’m sorry I keep going.

Krissy 27:25
Yeah, yeah. So after I did this next column, I was like, well, I’ve never worked for a publication before maybe I should like actually be on staff somewhere.

So I got an internship at California mag, which is UC Berkeley’s mag, as I said before, and I was such a horrible intern that they hired me as an editor instead. So that worked out that I read about science, and all this, like really politics, you know, serious journals and stuff, and of course, Bigfoot.

And then that, and now, I’m doing copywriting journalism, adjacent stuff, which means that I’m applying all of my scientific journalism skills to communicating to broader audiences in aerospace, which I think is very important, just because nobody knows anything about aerospace. I certainly didn’t, before I got this job.

So to answer your question, this is long winded. Okay. But my next journey is hopefully book writing and turning my weird blog into something that I can make some sort of money off of, I don’t expect it to be a huge moneymaker.

Because people don’t need to know about Bigfoot the way they need to know about blogging, and how to blog, sort of a fringe topic. It’s not going to pay the bills, generally.

But if I could figure out a way to make that work, that would be amazing. I want to write memoir, want to write fiction? I still want to do journalism. I’m going to tell you something, though.

I’m struggling to figure out how to do journalism, serious journalism, well researched on a blog, and have it not take for fucking ever. I like, yeah, it’s these a lot of people don’t realize that. If somebody is turned around a piece, and you see, you see a byline, right, like New York Times somebody’s name, you’re like, wow, you know, this thing just happened yesterday.

And they’ve already written 3000 words. It’s like, okay, maybe they did, but probably not.

It was probably with the help of two editors who are also doing the reporting. And like maybe another for people who have, like, you know, copy edited and did all this other stuff, other journalists who may have reported on it, and then somebody named gets on it. It’s a lot of work.

I don’t know if it’s a sustainable thing, while I have a full time job to be able to be doing that on my blog. So I’m in a transition period right now, where I’m figuring out, I’m trying to figure out where to go.

Pete 30:14
Okay, that’s–side note for everybody is I had my good friend, Desirae Odjick on the show, who is a blogger, freelance writer, currently on staff at Shopify, writing about e commerce sort of stuff.

And I asked her something to the effect of like, you guys put a lot into your content. And like, it just looks so good. And a lot of it’s like really thorough and properly not properly formatted. But like overly formatted for like a great user experience on my head. You guys like do all that? Like, what does that process look like?

What’s the process?

And she’s like, well, we have like three managers and three editors on our content team alone, and we have like 10 writers and for each post, where all in there on like a Skype call or a zoom call or something like that.

And we’re like spit ball and like at the speed of light, throwing ideas out and organizing the piece, like together and then I go write it.

And then I ship it off. And then like three people away in like the same bit like it’s this crazy, wild, collaborative process that could I can see where it could result in like a 3000 word post, and like 24 hours, or something like that, like a really well done post too. So we’ll sign up. So let me ask you this. I don’t have any answers for you.

By the way. I don’t know if you were looking for answers. But don’t think I have any.

As a solo show, it just takes a long time.

Krissy 31:36
You know what? I trust you because you say you don’t know when you don’t know?

Pete 31:41
Yeah, I could pretend to have answers. But that would be awkward, because I’m not a very good lawyer

Krissy 31:45
It would be.

Pete 31:48
So okay, so I have a few questions here. I want to ask, like, kind of an obvious question, which is, what did you learn from, I could have probably answered one a few different things here could be in a couple of years that you did, the second column could be in doing more, you know, formal journalism on politics, or science or whatever, UC Berkeley, maybe you can just pick a choose either of those.

But when it comes to, I’m just gonna, I’m just sorry, I’m just gonna keep this like super bland. Chris, just forgive me, when it comes to producing…

Krissy 32:23
vanilla.

Pete 32:24
Vanilla, when it comes to producing content…

What’s the one thing you learned from your years as a sex columnist? I know, that’s a hard question. To ask it like that, though, that makes most sense.

Krissy 32:39
When to move on from a subject.

Pete 32:42
what do you mean by that?

Krissy 32:43
So in terms of producing content, like I was producing sex content, right.

And it was actually difficult when I just had a body of work that was all about sex to get taken seriously. In other beats, people would be like, Oh, well, you know, if you write about sex, it’s going to be the only thing that you can write about.

And it was super offensive.

Because, I mean, obviously, you know, now I have this really big portfolio of all this different stuff. But people like to pigeonhole you, you do something good ones, and that’s all they want from you. And I just, I think that having a diverse portfolio was what allowed me to be in the place that I am now and be doing well.

But is that does that answer your question?

Pete 33:41
I think that a little bit, I actually have something more specific that I just thought I saw it in your last thought in my notes from your email. I have no idea what the words in this sentence means. I have no idea what these words mean.

But I’m gonna I’m gonna read it anyways–this is from in your email to me, by the way, “I could give some insight on how to write a good nutgraf, lede, head and dec, the capture people’s attention, while also being truthful AF,” which means “as f—” but the word the way those words are spelled like lede and head HAD Deck DK. Did you make these words up? Or do these words mean something?

Krissy 34:23
This is journalism lingo!

Pete 34:25
Yeah. Okay. That’s what I thought, Okay. And then maybe we’ll dive into the actual subject that you could help us with, like, some good insights on how to write these things, whatever they may be.

So let’s, uh, we’ll start with nutgraf. What is that?

Krissy 34:42
So a nutgraf is the nut of your story, basically, it’s um, so there are different ways that you can write a story, you can either have a, you can do a hard news story, which is going to have your lead, which was like the first intro sentence that says, who, what, where, when, why that’s the lead.

That’s like a lead.

Yes. And then the net graph, the net graph, so you have your lead, and then the net graph is usually comes maybe two or three paragraphs down, and it says, why they should care. What this article is going to tell you about. So it’s just like the crux of the piece. So it’s like, intro, not graph.

Pete 35:25
Okay, hang on. Okay, let’s define the rest of them. And then I’m going to come back and ask you kind of what this will do for us. Like, is there other some benefits to thinking about this as like a framework for producing content or what I’m gonna ask you about that. But

Krissy 35:38
I forgot to say the other one you can do is the soft news lead, which is like four paragraphs down, and then you have a nut graph. So it’s more of like a narrative intro.

Pete 35:46
Okay. This is my first time hearing about us. I’m like, Wait, what? Okay, so, lead, very first sentence. You said like the who, who, what, when, where, why, or whatever? Or who, what, when, where I got that the nutgraf? What is the head?

Krissy 36:01
So the head is just the headline.

Pete 36:03
Okay. Okay. All right. And the dec?

Krissy 36:06
the description, the thing that, you know, underneath the headline explains why people shouldn’t even begin to read the article.

Pete 36:14
Did you? Where did you learn these things? The street of hard knocks of journalism. This wasn’t introductory, right?

Krissy 36:22
No. Okay. I actually took a couple of journalism classes in college before I decided that that wasn’t the way I was going to go. And then it turned out, it was the way I was gonna go. It was just an intro journalism class.

They just told us about it. Okay, that’s it. I mean, if you Google, if you google journalism terms, you’ll find them. But I don’t know how I don’t know if they’re used across the board anymore. Because there are so many hybrid publications. Now, who knows?

Pete 36:54
The reason I even like wrote this down, I kind of figured it would be something like that, even though I didn’t actually know what those words meant.

I’ve heard lede before. By the way, I don’t know what a headline is, obviously, but I hadn’t heard of not graph and deck.

Anyways. The reason I brought it up is specifically for two things that every single person listening this podcast has experienced with and they do all the time, which I’m super into. This is my favorite thing about copywriting headlines, and or subject lines.

For my super nerdy email marketers out there headlines and intros, I’m just gonna say intros. But what I really mean is something you put at the top of a piece of content that makes people stick around to get said content.

So when I think about selling anything, you got to have people’s attention, and you got to hold people’s attention, whether that’s a product or sales page, or a blog post, where you’re trying to teach somebody something they really need to know about Bigfoot, they’re never going to learn it unless you can get them with the headline, and like the intro, or the the head and the lead, and the deck and the nut graph. So all that said, I want to ask you some tips for both of those.

‘m gonna take them one by one. We’ll start with headlines first.

And in fact, when you actually said something about this in your email to Didn’t you did. Maybe that I think you you’d said something.

Krissy 38:18
I don’t even remember.

Pete 38:21
I see far too many headlines out there. Now that make me want to turn off my computer and never read the news again.

We all know what clickbait is. Give us your like, top five tips on writing headlines that don’t suck, aren’t super, you know, newsy clickbait that makes, you might turn off your computer never read the news again.

But we can still use to like, grab people and hook them in. Do you have any tips for some headlines?

Krissy 38:48
I would say enthusiasm is good. Again, opinion is not the but that’s that’s for journalism. If you’re writing a blog, that’s an opinion blog, yeah. Then do whatever you want cares, that’s different. Totally different. Um, I would say, whenever I’m deciding what to write for a headline, I find the most interesting piece of information in the in the whole article, whether I, whether it’s the actual story that I’m leading with or not, what I’ll do is I’ll try to put that up at the top.

And also, I always asked myself, why should anybody care? Anybody, if the headline isn’t going to appeal to, you know, grandma walking her dog, and you know, some guy who’s like, 16, smoking weed in his basement, then it’s like, it’s not a good headline, it has to appeal to both of them. I want both of them to read the story.

And I want you the relevance to them. So that I mean, that’s what runs through my head. The problem is, so you actually have to be a good writer to do it. You know, it’s like, I mean, I guess people can, you know, they can get better at writing as time goes on. But I mean, I’ve I’ve written quite a fruit quite a few turds.

Pete 40:29
Totally. You gotta write the church for you get the good stuff.

Krissy 40:32
I’m writer now. But yes, you gotta write the turns before you get the gold. So I would say, I guess my number one advice would be be a good writer. Well,

Pete 40:44
that is horrible. First of all, and the worst podcast guests I’ve ever had.

No, I’m joking.

No, no, there’s something that there’s a truth to that though. And it’s not just be a good writer know, it’s right. More. I tell people this all the time. Like, this is my, one of my things. Whenever somebody forces me to write every day, I don’t write every day, by the way, I probably should.

Even it was a little bit. They always say like, “Oh, you need to write 200 words a day, 250 words a day, even if it’s bad.”

I actually still think that’s great advice. Whenever I do that, for any length of time, like more than a week, I will find it. So much of a better process. And I will look at what I produce. This totally applies to like headlines, and like subject lines as well, by the way, like when I have a post I care about person not very often anymore. But when I do, I will write like 50 headlines, really 50 headlines, and the first one was utterly garbage.

And then I’ll come back to it. And I’ll make it better. And then the second one, the same thing. And then the third and the fifth. By the time I do that, I’ll like be able to combine like three of them. I don’t have something I’m super happy about. It’s not just clickbait, but it’s a little bit like intriguing and might get people to click, but it’s also relevant and informative. It’s perfect headline.

And I think the only way to get there was the headline or blog content, whatever is right, more. So I think that’s what you think that’s what you were going for with be a good writer, write more, the only way to be a good writer is write more, right?

Krissy 42:09
Yes. So I will say I will say this, writing more is important.

And you have to practice you have to do it regularly.

One thing I will say and this is a problem I was having, I listened to these productivity podcasts, and people are like, get up every morning at 5am. Don’t drink any coffee, work out, make sure you write for five hours before you have a full time job somehow, like all this stuff, and it was stressing me out. You know, I’ve learned that it’s okay, to not be as productive. Just as long as you’re being productive. You don’t have to be top tier, whatever.

And then the other thing too, is that people’s lives don’t allow for that. I don’t know how these people have these like charmed lives, where they can get up every morning and pray their Muse and all of that stuff. I don’t have that.

Okay. I just can’t do it.

Like so. I mean, I recently got this job, this new job and it takes me an hour and a half to get to work in the morning. Okay, so that hour so that I would be usually taking before I you know, I got this job to write fun stuff. Bigfoot stuff, for example, that was gone. Okay.

So what I did was, you know, I have a desktop. I love working on the desktop. Well, tough shit. I ordered a little laptop. And now every morning I write for 45 minutes on the train. Do what did I have the two hours that I had before? No.

But so what you know, your life is going to look way different than anybody else’s. So don’t get like down on yourself for not writing every day. Because fuck it, you know, they don’t know you

Pete 43:54
I am going to spare you and everybody listen to this my 25 a minute long rant on this subject.

It’s not really a rant. It really is. Let’s just say that it took me a lot longer than most people. Not just productivity either, by the way, but like, what tools I use for my own, like blog and business.

I kept looking to other people like this person who just loves this tool. I’ve tried so hard to use it. I’ve spent like 50 hours like googling how to use this tool for me like Wait, why not just go with what I was already using? That was free? And I already know. And it’s like, 20 times more effective. Like, why can’t I let it go?

Right? That you know what somebody else is doing? Is what I should be doing. Spare by the rant, I could talk a lot. I don’t wake up at 5am. I tried. It wasn’t for me. So kudos to you. By the way, at least you get to ride on the train.

Krissy 44:46
It’s true.

Pete 44:47
You live in like LA or Atlanta or Chicago is a lot better. So here but man, I was commuting for three hours a day like in the car driving, like all I have are like podcast anyways. Right? All this brutal. We’re I’m sorry, I got distracted out my head is like in rant space. No, it’s not your fault. I’m in rant space now.

Let me ask you this.

I didn’t forget what I was gonna say that I’m seriously thinking about waking up at 5am now and how mad it makes me when I see other people like destroying their own lives trying to like conform to some sort of like ideal that they see on Instagram,

Krissy 45:24
it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to like, get up, it’s okay to have a day where you don’t write at all, because your car broke down or whatever it is, you don’t have to feel this pressure from these people you’ll never meet who don’t care about you, because they don’t know about you.

Pete 45:44
You’re right.

Krissy 45:44
Who cares?

Pete 45:45
Okay, well, hang on. I’m gonna put you on the spot. What do you do personally, when you find yourself facing one of those days, where you look at the watch, and it’s like, wow, it’s already noon, and I haven’t done anything.

And I have like a frown on my face and just not feeling motivated. And, you know, I don’t actually think anything productive is going to happen today. That might be an extreme. But on days like that, what do you do to either a get back on the horse? Or be like, be comfortable? Not being on the horse? If that makes sense?

What do you what do you do on those days? I’m super curious now.

Krissy 46:21
So actually looked into this bet. There’s a lot of studies around the psychology of mantras, right. And by mantras, I don’t mean necessarily like spiritual mantras or anything like that, right? If I feel like I’ve spent a day not doing what is important to me, or is leading me towards, like an ultimate goal of say, writing a book, or we’re making the blog successful. to myself, in my head, I just say, I am a writer.

And today doesn’t change that. The more that I’ve done that, the more I believe it and feel it and I’m comfortable missing it.

Cuz I’m somebody who’s hypercritical in my head. And I have a subconscious running voice that says you’re not a writer, you’re not committed to this. So it’s just creating a replacement for that kind of thought. You are consciously replacing those bad thoughts that are holding back.

Pete 47:22
I like that. This is possibly going back on the waking up at 5am. Right for five our influence or Instagram train that’s possibly going back there. But have you read the book atomic habits?

Krissy 47:35
Have not

Pete 47:36
okay. It’s actually pretty good. I am pretty critical of like business books and self improvement, productivity books at this point in time, because I’ve read a lot and a lot of them really don’t need to be written.

But atomic habits is actually really good. And what you just said is actually one of the the larger points in that book.

So as this mindset shift, which is not when people say mindset, that kind of like puts me off immediately, I don’t know about you, but when people start talking about mindset, I’m like, okay, like, what, like, what does that actually mean?

But in the real sense of the word, having this mantra or mindset, or whatever the heck you want. For me, it’s actually like, taking about a minute to like meditate, just like mini meditation sessions and getting back into it. I am this sort of person.

That’s like a game changer. The examples from the book, this totally, like, somewhat relevant. Apologies to everybody.

But the examples in the book was somebody trying to quit smoking. And if somebody like offered them a cigarette, there’s like a huge difference. In the two responses, one could be like, Oh, no, thanks. I’m trying to quit smoking. vs. I’m not a smoker. Even if there’s like just trying to quit, like trying to self identify yourself as a certain type of person can actually make you do things.

This is why the book is about atomic habits can actually form habits that will make you quit smoking or write on days where you don’t feel like writing or work on these. You don’t feel like working anyway, I found that fascinating.

That’s actually a pretty good book.

Krissy 49:17
Yes, I’ve heard I’ve heard some of the things not from that book. But I’ve heard heard about that. Another thing that I found useful for myself, that’s kind of a fad right now, but I actually think kind of works. It’s called productive procrastination.

So yeah, so the the idea behind it is that you find a bunch of different creative projects at one time, so that when you get tired of working on, say, an article, you can switch over to the book you’re working on. So like, you’re still actually doing things that are productive, and you’re satisfying that need to procrastinate.

But you’re getting shit done in the process. I found that to be very helpful to me, because sometimes after I’ve worked on an article for, you know, three hours, I’m kind of burnout on that subject for the day.

But then I can move over to something else and still feel good about myself. feel good about the fact that I’m doing

Pete 50:15
Oh, wow, you just blew my mind in a way that you do not even realize.

I’ve been doing this on accident.

Yeah, can you hear it?

Krissy 50:23
Yeah!

Pete 50:24
I just read an a review on iTunes of my own podcast, which by the way, is like a dangerous game. For anybody who struggles with like, self confidence.

Don’t go read the reviews. But anyways, most of mine are like, really great. So thank you, for everybody listening out there. Go drop me a review wherever you listen to your podcast now.

But this person was like, I love this podcast, I enjoy the heck out of Pete’s guest, whatever, I just put Pete with talk less. And I was like, dang it. But at the risk of offending that one person out of the several thousand people listen to this podcast, my own venture, and what you’re talking about is planning, organizing, and working on software tools that enhance my business.

Those three things do not feel like work to me. Whenever I when people tell me like Pete, you need to get a little bit more organized. Or Pete you know, you really need to like nail down a very clear plan for your business over the next six months. I hear those people and I’m like, I don’t want to do that.

Part of the reason I don’t want to do that it’s not because I don’t think it’s valuable is because that doesn’t feel like work. And if I spend eight hours, like planning and organizing, and, you know, optimizing software and my business, I don’t feel like I’ve gotten any work done. And I’m angry at myself, which is stupid, stupid.

So for me, it’s been recently, kind of like allowing myself to do that when I don’t feel like working. And it turns out that those people, right, and it’s actually super valuable. What do you know? They’re not, it’s not

Krissy 51:55
I thought, like, I thought it was kind of stupid. But then I started doing it. And I was like, Oh, fuck, got so much done today. You know,

Pete 52:03
Was this–Where did you hear about this?

Krissy 52:06
I want to say I heard about it on a podcast with two comedians. It’s been like six or seven months. They’ve mentioned it briefly. And then I looked it up online. And then I saw, apparently, some guys theory.

Who’s to say?

Pete 52:26
So I want to kind of wind down, I want to let you like to do your morning in or day, maybe just one or two more questions, though. And I had to do this, since you mentioned it earlier.

And we’re talking about interviewing and journalism or whatnot. You know, I have to ask this. Is there anything that you wish I had asked to you so far throughout this podcast?

Krissy 52:46
Such a good question. I guess–I guess I wish you had asked me, or think maybe it would be cool. You had asked me about I guess what have I What am I learned from being a writer who has written about strange things?

And maybe like, what it’s taught me about pursuing writing?

That is important, I guess, what would the question be? I’m trying to figure out how to frame it into the question.

Pete 53:25
So I don’t know. But I definitely saw a lot of that when you were going back to your sex columnist, origin story. Like, kind of the reason you got involved with that is because you were, I guess, like scratching your own itch, so to speak, like you were you were looking at what’s already out there in the world, and then you wanted it to be better, in some way.

At least, that’s what you were kind of hinting at. I did that with my own podcast. By the way, I wanted more weird, rambling long form conversational topics with interesting people on the subject of blogging, and it wasn’t out there. So that’s why I started this podcast. But I don’t know the exact question, but

Krissy 54:04
I know the question. I’ve got it now.

Pete 54:06
Okay.

Krissy 54:08
Why Or what do you do? when everybody is telling you not to pursue the thing you want to do?

Pete 54:16
That is not what I expected this to go. Okay. Krissy, are you ready? How do you feel about and what do you do? When you feel the overwhelming presence from everybody else around you, family, friends, bosses, co workers, society culture, when they’re telling you not to do the thing that you really want to do? Or feel you need to do? What do you do at times like that?

Krissy 54:41
As we’ve talked about a little bit, I tend to pursue strange subjects in my writing. And I’ve had life experiences that most people haven’t.

And while exploring these avenues, and doing well in them, others couldn’t wait to critique me and tell me what I was doing wrong. Don’t write a sex column. Don’t write about Bigfoot, don’t cuss? You know, stop wearing band t shirts and combat boots.

You know, no one’s gonna ever take you seriously as a writer if you don’t button up or whatever.

Well, guess what? They were wrong.

Okay, like, I’m doing fucking great. Believe it or not. There’s no correlation between combat boots and writing ability. Just to clear the air on that myth right now.

I know. Shocking.

Pete 55:26
common myth!

Krissy 55:30
But yeah, so it like, even though it It, it, you know, hurt to hear from people that I respected that I that they thought I was going to fail or that I shouldn’t do it. It felt better to pursue the writing that I want to do.

So it made it may have felt bad to hear what they had to say. But it felt better to do it anyway. So as a writer, I think, I think you should listen to your intuition. Many great inventor, inventors, writers, don’t listen to what anyone else is telling them to do, like great writers, they have a uniqueness in them that they recognize, and they don’t try to hold back.

And they know they’re going to make something new. That’s style. Right. And when I read a truly great writer, I feel myself being pulled along a path with them their specific path, and it moves me to stand my own path.

Because I want to feel what they’re feeling but in my own way. So I think it’s important to find what kind of writing or what subjects speak to you like, you may not be a great writer, if you’re covering politics, because that’s not that’s not what’s pulling you forward in life.

Okay, maybe you’re stifling the fact that you want to write about witchcraft, or the tumultuous history of the American bake sale? I don’t know. I’m just making stuff up. Okay.

Pete 56:50
That one saw the way plan like you could not have been done. I’m sorry.

Krissy 56:53
Keep going. But what the American bake sale? Yeah. I mean, I think that bake sales are kind of sinister, but we won’t go into that now.

Pete 57:02
I have no idea. Okay.

Krissy 57:04
It’s not to bake sale itself, it’s to be able to put it together anyway.

So people are going to crap on your dreams, okay, because they’re afraid of pursuing their dreams, and failing. And they want you to be afraid to so they’re not alone. But it’s better to be alone and connected to your purpose, and to be satisfied with your creative output, than to be a miserable troll, you know, underneath someone else’s bridge to happiness, you know, it’s, it’s just like, not good.

So, I guess the best part about me writing about what I want to write is that if people don’t like my work, they don’t have to read it.

And I guarantee that no matter what subject that anybody chooses, like, there will be people out there who will want to read your stuff, and they’ll love it. And they will, you know, reach up their hands to catch you as you crowd surf to glory. But it’s like, it’s like up to you to jump. When people tell me not to write about strange things, it’s because they’re afraid.

And I recognize that in them.

It’s more a reflection of who they are., than who I am.

Pete 58:25
A little vulnerable.

Krissy 58:26
Did I answer the question even? Sorry?

Pete 58:30
I don’t even remember the question now. But yes!

Krissy 58:33
sounds good.

Pete 58:34
I think you did. So something interesting about that. You actually said the words “alone.”

The funny thing is, and you’ve alluded to this, at the end there is that you’re never alone. for very long, it seems like especially I’m specifically talking about people who produce content on the internet now specifically, like bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, craters like this, like, Listen to the show.

It’s fine.

You think you may be alone, because your parents don’t want you to write a blog, or they think it’s stupid, and it’s never going to amount to anything. And maybe they’re right. And maybe they’re not.

I quit my first blog on my podcast a decade ago, because my, I’m using air quotations here. Friends made fun of me. And they thought it was stupid. And they told me as such every time I saw them, so I quit. And then I quit those friends and came back.

But I eventually discovered this white talk about community, a lot, so much on this podcast to discover that, Oh, I’m not actually alone. There just doesn’t happen to be anybody in my immediate vicinity. Like in my hometown, my small town that cares about what I care about, and wants to do what I’m doing.

I just had to go find those people. And it took me like, I don’t know, 30 years to realize that but I’m so glad I found that now. There’s, there’s there’s weird people out there ended up with a whole bunch of interest. That was a good question.

Krissy 1:00:00
Was it?

Pete 1:00:01
There was no, it really was. Even if people aren’t moving to San Francisco, and like starting a second column. That might be I’m not gonna say extreme.

But that might be like, on the extreme end of people would judge that. You know, I mean, I still think there’s a lot smaller. I still think there’s a lot smaller versions of that. Whenever the people listen to the show, start talking about their creative projects.

Because if you walk up the 30 people and your local Starbucks, and you start talking about, oh, I run a personal finance podcast. 29 of those people are going to glaze over, within the first minute. anything, any creative endeavor over the internet is still in catch up mode.

For like mainstream society. It’s when you say you run a blog called hot alien. Some people are just like, they have no idea where they’re getting into like, Oh, that sounds weird. And I know what a blog is, I think and hot alien. I don’t get it. And when I say, Oh, I run a podcast called Do You Even Blog people are like, glazed over. Talk about?

So I think it was a good question. I think everybody listen to this show can identify with least some part of that. So kudos to you.

Okay, last question. And then we’ll let you go Chrissy. What’s one thing you wish other bloggers or in your case, I will admit it to say, what’s the one thing you wish other bloggers or journalists would stop doing immediately?

Krissy 1:01:31
I guess I would say, in the vein of what we were just discussing, stop critiquing other people’s work when you’re not even happy with your own.

You know, it’s just like, if if you have a problem with something that was written by somebody else, then go do it better. If you can do it better, do it better. Put yourself up on the chopping block. And see how that feels. I do my best to never have to publicly critique anyone. I have written a couple of journalistic reviews in the past, and it just felt gross. Like reviews of well, granted, it was a review of a porn premiere. But you know, that’s neither here nor there. I love it. Yeah.

So I would say support other writers. I think that we we need more of that and stop, stop acting. Like there is a hierarchy of writers. You know, there’s, there’s also I will say this, you know, there’s not very many journalism jobs now. And there’s a lot of freelancers. And it’s really hard to get your stuff published as a freelancer.

There’s, you know, these gatekeepers at these publications, and not all of them, but some of them think that they’re God’s gift, be they happened to look into a job. And so they don’t treat their freelancers very well. And they also don’t work with them on ideas in ways that I think they should. So I think I think a lack of elitism would be nice.

Pete 1:03:15
I like it. Krissy, thank you so much for coming on. This has been all over the place and the best possible way.

I love it is just my type of conversation.

Where do you have people connect with you? Where would you point them to? First and foremost, to kind of see what you’ve written in the past lots of fascinating stuff. By the way, I can go ahead and vouch for that. Or connect with Haley calm, obviously set the number one choice for where to point people.

Krissy 1:03:44
KrissyEliot.com or hotalien.com. That would be great. I don’t I’m trying to tweet more. I just created a Twitter just this past year. I really I should probably be doing it more. But anyway,

Pete 1:04:01
You can also be waking up at 5am I writing for three hours.

Krissy 1:04:06
Writing tweets for three hours at 5am!

Pete 1:04:09
I was up at 5am to tweet every morning.

Krissy 1:04:13
It’s Yes. So but honestly, I’m very Google-able. If you look up Krissy Eliot , you’ll find me–last name E-L-I-O-T–fun fact about me. I’m related to TS Eliot. If anybody knows who that is, famous poet.

Pete 1:04:30
Yes, we’re destined for this

Krissy 1:04:32
destined for writing glory. So if you can’t remember how to spell my last name was one L and one T, know Eliot is very exhausting name to spell. But remember, TS Eliot. Add Another fun fact. My mom’s name is Missy. So I just thought everybody should know that as well. Very important. But not

Pete 1:04:54
the Missy Elliot different not?

Krissy 1:04:56
Well, I mean, she is the Missy Elliott to me, mom.

Pete 1:05:02
Krissy. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I wish you the best of luck in your current aerospace endeavors and journalism and let me know when the book comes out. Obviously, I want an advanced copy of it. And I will read it. By the way

Krissy 1:05:16
You will have a book for me mark my words.

Pete 1:05:19
That’s great. I’ll hold you to it. I love it. Well, thanks for coming on Krissy. Appreciate it.

Krissy 1:05:23
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This is awesome.

Pete 1:05:28
Already blog tribe. I hope you enjoyed that awesome episode with Chrissy here are my takeaways. One big one that’s got staring me in the face is something that almost all creators face at some point. Maybe you’re not feeling this right now in your own blogging journey, because you’ve been doing it a while maybe or you just never had this problem to begin with. But a lot of people doubt themselves. At some point. A lot of people have family, friends, other creators around them that for whatever reason might actually hold them back from being who they need to be from being who they want to be. I know this sounds like a little bit whoo, whoo, a little bit corny. But I for one, listen to Chrissy story and admire the fact that she has no judgments on herself right now. She has no fear right now about blogging about Bigfoot. She’s doing the things that she wants to do. And it didn’t happen immediately. Right. She had to learn how to be herself and be confident and comfortable being herself not the little. Again, not all of you are experiencing this frustration or this pain, like right now. But how many of us tend to like fall back into talking about topics that we’re comfortable with dialing back our sales because we don’t want to appear too salesy, even though we believe in the product, even though we believe in our message, whatever, that maybe a lot of creators, myself included, have had this issue in the past. We’re not 100% confident and comfortable with who we are. And so we hold back, we do a little bit of copycatting what other people have done. We’re not our full selves. We’re not our true selves, hashtag whatever you want to call it. We’re afraid, sometimes not all the time, but we’re afraid. Okay. I just want to remind you, this is the big takeaway reading. It’s okay. It’s okay to be fearful of what other people think you just have to fight through that. Please do yourself and the world of favor. In growing that confidence, whatever it takes to say the things you want to say, to say what needs to be said in order to change your audience’s lives. Please do that. It may take time. It’s not going to happen overnight. But use Chrissy as inspiration, as an example, right? To blog, the way you need to blog to run your business, the way you think your business should be run to help your customers the way they need to be helped tell people what they need to hear today, people what they want to hear, don’t be afraid. Actually, you will be afraid. But move through the fear. There you go. That’s my one big takeaway. Actually, I have one more takeaway. Now that I think about it. The takeaway is to have a mindset. This is like a mindset takeaway. I’m really sorry, I wish you go like implement this ASAP, and grow your blog traffic. But you can’t do that right away. It’s a mindset thing, the mindset of clearly communicating complicated subjects. A lot of you are into travel hacking, and you do with a bunch of numbers or personal finance research, like investing strategy, and you talk about where the economy is going. And like, we can bring all sorts of data and numbers and complicated strategies about blogging and SEO and every topic under the sun. It’s always good to have this mindset of did I communicate this clearly enough? I think of Chrissy talking to rocket scientist and trying to tell their story to media. I think of me taking technical element or tutorials on Do You Even Blog and trying to make it digestible so you can follow it so you can understand it so you can engage with it again, I know this isn’t super hashtag actionable. But I think this is an important mindset for us, as content creators to keep in mind and the back of our heads at all times. communicate clearly always have this mindset of did I present this in the best way possible, so that people can understand it, so that people can actually learn what I’m trying to teach them? How can I simplify? How can I communicate better? There you go. There’s a big mindset thing. Not hashtag actionable, but still awesome.

And I do believe that’s going to do it. If you enjoyed this episode of the Do You Even Blog show? Do You Even Blog show if you enjoyed this episode? All I ask is that you tell a friend, there you go be my word of mouth marketing system. Hashtag word of mouth. I love it. I’m sorry. I’ve had a lot of coffee this afternoon. If you enjoyed this episode telepresence, and thank you so much for being a part of my audience. I love you guys, man. creators, bloggers, podcasters online entrepreneur, digital folk. I love you guys. Go out there and make an impact. publish something awesome. Don’t hold back. Be your hashtag, best self or some other corny buzzword? I don’t know. Get out there. Make a ruckus as Seth Godin might say go do good. Thanks, man. I love you guys. Hit me up on Twitter at Do You Even Blog email me, Pete at Do You Even blog.com if you need anything or just want to say hello. I love you guys. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you next time. Adios

Table of Contents.

• A very short pre-requisite HTML & CSS introduction
• How to style intro paragraphs (and why you might want to do this).
• Coding a simple Table of Contents
• How to interlink different parts of your page using CSS IDs.

Important note: What is that “p” doing before “.fancy-intro?”

Sadly, just copying and pasting what I have might not work for you–because every WordPress theme can act a bit differently!

You may have overriding CSS elsewhere in your theme, and will, therefore, have to “target” the intro paragraph a bit differently.

This could take a bit of trial and error, but try targeting with some of these first (where “name” is the name of your CSS class):

• .name
• p.name
• .entry-content p.name
• .single .entry-content p.name

A huge word of warning:

If you’re not familiar with mobile-first CSS, I would NOT recommend setting a specific width and float value.

If you’re not careful, you could end up with this for your mobile readers:

Here’s your call to action:

If you enjoy this post, all I ask is that you share and tell a friend!

Also, drop me a comment if you’re going to try this with your blog.

Bonus points if you get it working and drop your URL below!

My takeaway for everybody else:

It doesn’t matter how big and profitable Starbucks gets, there will always be demand for the local coffee shop.

However, the local coffee shop HAS to be able to distinguish itself, stand out to a different audience, and figure out a way to carve out a niche.

The growing blog brands won’t crush the little folks, but they will make it tougher to “be average and succeed.”

My Takeaway: Podcasting is BOOMING, and will likely get more difficult to stand out and grow a show!

Also, this part of the reason I’ve rebranded Online Impact to serve bloggers AND podcasters.

My podcasting courses are coming soon! I AM SO EXCITED.

Both the technical and non-technical podcasting courses will a part of the Online Impact membership 👍

It’s never been more vital to develop a clear vision for growing your business.

There are more marketing strategies available to you than ever before. More choices. More paths.

• podcasting?
• YouTube?
• Alexa Skills?
• Pinterest Ads?
• Membership sites?
• Summits?
• Affiliate marketing?
• Sponsorships?
• Courses? (It’s tough out there)

Goodness gracious.

THIS IS WHY I’M BUILDING A MEMBERSHIP COMMUNITY.

The current plan for Online Impact is simple:

1. Help our members figure out where they’re going (through 1-on-1 strategy sessions)
2. Give em resources to help them get there.
3. Hold them accountable (by making them a part of the larger group, among other peer presures)

And yes, I have ZERO ISSUES self-promoting the heck out of my program now.

I’ve never felt more comfortable selling anything, actually.

Lots of people NEED certain things they just can’t get from an online course or free content.

Our 3-Step Process for Improving Page Load Times

1. Make sure images are compressed
2. Implemented page caching
3. Use a CDN service

Let’s breeze through these.

Oh, and Online Impact membership also includes unlimited access to WP Rocket for free!

Important Note: You WILL be changing your nameservers in this step!

This requires access to the backend of your website, etc.

I HIGHLY recommend Googling instructions based on your domain registrar (not necessarily your host). I.e. “how to change nameservers Siteground,” etc.

Listen to my episode with the Fancy Scientist, Dr. Stephanie Schuttler:

Listen to my episode with Chelsea Brennan

How to DO this CrissCross Drill:

1. Grab several sheets of paper, or open a Google doc
2. Brainstorm and braindump everything you can for each question!
3. Do the “crisscross,” I.e. find the crossover ideas
4. Expand on those

I HIGHLY recommend giving yourself a blank sheet of paper for EACH question.

This gives you plenty of space to think, draw, and write.

A few examples to help you out:

• My audience feels an emotional need to “be prepared” financially (especially for emergencies). They want comfort.
• They need something QUICK and EASY to start fixing this problem today, else it’s completely overwhelming. They also need something affordable (since they’re concerned about money already).
• I’m really good at creating printables, and genuinely enjoy it.

That’s the ICE Binder.

Here’s another:

• My audience wants to grow their platforms and make more money to supplement or quit their jobs–but they usually lack a clear strategy, a bit of knowledge, and support.
• Courses do ok, but there are several other systems and FORMATS that actually help them achieve their goals a lot more.
• I’m really good at creating tons of course quickly, and connecting people with assets that’ll provide them support.

That’s Online Impact.

A quick note of caution…

I will NOT be suggesting productivity hacks, focus hacks, or any other magic hacks that’ll result in your calendar mysteriously containing more free time.

No, what is in this post is sadly a lot harder than that.

How we’re answering this in Online Impact

There’s one little problem I left out until now…

Gaining clarity about your content business is hard.

It can’t always be done in one sitting, or even with one person…

In our membership community, we’re doing a few things to face this problem for you:

1. You’ll have a quick intro call where we chat about your ultimate goal
2. You’ll have one month to prepare for an extended strategy call. At the end of this call–you should walk away with a MUCH clearer vision about what strategies you need to be focusing on in order to grow you business.
3. One of our two monthly calls is ENTIRELY FOCUSED ON STRATEGY. We’ll split into groups and take turns sharing the “hot seat,” where that person shares their strategy/focus and gets feedback.

That stuff will be on your calendar.

You’ll also have access to a network of people you can reach out to in order to get more clarity when it starts to get muddy.

And it always gets muddy again.

So–if you feel like this is something you struggle with (or wouldn’t mind consistent accountability and help with!), come join us in Online Impact.

We’re like your gym.

Online Impact is the gym membership for your online business journey.

The place you can go to get feedback, support, accountability, and tools–but you still gotta work.

• You still gotta lift your own weights.
• You still gotta show up.
• But we’re there.

We’re there with the tools you need to move forward, and a place that’s open where you can come.

Online Impact Price: $35/mo A membership community for bloggers, podcasters, and online entrepreneurs who want to grow their income. Online Impact has tons of courses, 1-on-1 support, monthly events, and access to premium tools. Learn More

Listen to my episode with Raina Willick!

Note: I’m not saying you should scrap your annual New Year’s resolution or your 2022 goals.

By all means, set a general target for 2022!

Implementing the 12-Week Blog Planner is not a replacement for an annual goal—it’s a supplement.

A necessary supplement if you’re like me.

In fact, an annual goal can help you step back from day-to-day grinds and think objectively and long-term.

That’s a crucial step to 12-week years as well–but it HAS to be coupled with shorter-term planning.

Important: What makes a good tactic?

1 – Your tactics should start with a verb and be a complete sentence.

“Email 3 people this week with a guest post pitch.”

“Write 1 blog post and publish, and write 1 blog post draft to get ahead.”

“Create automation workflow “shell” in Drip, start-to-finish.”

2 – Your tasks should be “executable in the week they are due to be delivered.”

I.e. If your task can’t be completed in one week, it’s too long. Break it up into smaller chunks.

How do I create weekly plans?

2 ways:

1. You could take your big 12-week plans and break them into 12 chunks (hard)
2. You could brainstorm—then organize—your tactics into weeks, and THEN make weekly goals (what I have to do).

For me personally, I have to start with the overarching goals (the 12-week ones), then create tactics, then create weekly goals in the process of organizing the tasks.

The idea behind this:

If you’ve done the homework starting from the vision, the goals–then determined the highly-leveraged actions to take to accomplish your goals—the ONLY step left is execution.

So what if you execute—and you don’t hit your goals?

Measurement is the ONLY way to properly diagnose a lack of results and figure out whether it was your plan that was flawed or your execution.

Tactic scoring example:

If you had 4 tactics in week 1, and you completed (and I mean completely completed) 3 out of the 4, your score for the week is 75%.

You can also listen to this post in podcast format!

Robert at The College Investor (who has hundreds of old posts) publishes 5x a week.

• M, W, and Fri = new content
• Tu and Thurs = old content, revamped.

Brennan Dunn has a year-long email funnel that walks new subscribers through all of his best content.

What about 5% of the time spent on admin? Like, wtf?

This is a tough one…

It’d be easy to say “At this point, you should hire your first virtual assistant!” or something–but I don’t think that’s entirely doable for many bloggers.

Experienced bloggers CAN start to systemize and create scalable processes for engaging with and managing their community (email, FB groups, etc).

Rather than respond to every single question–write a post about it (example: this post), or do a Facebook live. Then you can simply reference the post anytime you get the question again.

Why it’s vital for new bloggers to spend MOST of their time on the creation process.

Two huge reasons…

1. to get better and more efficient at it
2. with no following, your content IS YOUR BEST MARKETING.

Also, it’s never too early in your blogging career to utilize tools to save time…

Even in month zero–there are definitely “must-have” tools. The trick is learning when enough is enough–for now.

A new blogger shouldn’t spend hours on hours learning 15+ WordPress plugins.

If you’d like a run-down on my tried-and-tested blogging tools, read this guide.

Here are links to the updates:

• October 2018 – 1 month in
• January 2019 – 4 months in
• April 2019 – 7 months in
• September 2019 – 12 months in

This case study is currently in progress! I’ll be updating this page as we go along 🙂

Listen to my interview with Tanya – Part 1 (Months 0-3)

Here’s what new bloggers should do to get people on their email list:

In short, write out 1-2 small paragraphs on WHY they should join.

Specifically, read this post on the WHAT-WHY-WHAT formula–then do that.

Example:

Hi! I’m Tanya, and I help busy adults find the time and money to travel the way they dream of!

Join my newsletter, and I’ll send you less than 3 emails a month with my very best travel tips, deal alerts for hotels and airfare, and general inspiration to travel better (and more often!)

Instead of a publishing goal–adopt a writing goal.

Or a “creation” goal, including videos, podcasts, images, etc.

Instead of “I want to post 3x a week,” the goal becomes something like “I want to write 250 words every single day.”