Build a sustainable, profitable, business with your content feat. Kimberly Ann Jimenez
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Kimberly Ann Jimenez is an entrepreneur, creative, educator and here to help you cut through the online marketing noise so you can start growing your brand confidently. She has her YouTube channel as well as is the founder of the business lounge, proudly serving 17,000 students in 47 countries. The Business Lounge is all Kim's best thinking in one place. She's in the trenches with her members, five days per week providing the personalized feedback and support they need to grow. If you’re wanting to launch, grow or scale a profitable online business, it is the right place for you.
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TRANSCRIPT
Javier Mercedes [00:02:05] I'm pumped for today because we are here with the business lounge founder. Kimberly Ann Jimenez. How's it going?
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:02:12] It's going awesome. Thank you for pronouncing my last name correctly, by the way. So it's so sweet of you.
Javier Mercedes [00:02:18] I'm going to be straightforward. I'm intimidated by both you and your husband, by what you have been able to accomplish in the content creation space. And in order to pack all of that into a conversation for this podcast would be insane. But let's talk about what you do with the business lounge and content creation in general, I think the value that you can provide to the listeners is insurmountable. Let's just begin with vanity metrics for your social media and how that doesn't equate to dollars in the bank. So can you explain your philosophy on that? And I'm really just like diving right into this. Do you want to give little bit of background on who you are or where do you want to start?
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:03:09] So first and foremost, thank you so much. Like that compliment means the world and you should not be intimidated at all. You have an amazing platform, you doing amazing things. And I just really appreciate you having me on the show. So that being said, thank you for having me. And just a little bit of a background on kind of started in the social media marketing space to helping Chris kind of build his first startup and then transitioned into education after a very long set of events. But now with the business lounge, are we basically run a membership site. So we teach entrepreneurs how to grow, launch, and scale their businesses through online content marketing and a lot of business strategies that are involved in that, because it's not just, hey, let's get you on Instagram or let's, you know, figure out video or let's build an email list. [00:03:59]It's about building a sustainable, profitable business and not focusing on the vanity metrics that are so popular and so many people are just so addicted to these days. [11.4s] Right. It's just like, hey, you know, how many likes can I get on this Instagram post or, you know, how many people can I get to watch my videos, which are all really good and important things. But unfortunately, those things do not equal money in the bank. [00:04:25]We are all about being profitable over being popular. [3.7s] And I think that's something that is so important and a message that I am very, very passionate about. I'm so glad that you brought that up. I had the advantage of being a social media manager for so many years and then going into consulting and seeing the back end of my clients businesses. From so many different industries from realitors, to roofing companies, to real estate and bigger firms that had 500, 600, 1000 employees. Seeing the numbers no matter what. Whether you have a very small marketing budget or you're running a couple million dollars a year in Facebook ads, at the end of the day, it's not just about who can get the most engagement, and who has the biggest following. It's about who understands how to convert those followers into buyers. It's about understanding the process of adding value to people, about building a relationship, about finding people who are your ideal clients and ideal customers attracting those people. Starting with the end in mind. Instead of trying to speak to everybody, trying to get the biggest amount of followers, Growing your Instagram, your YouTube. Whatever it may be. It's not about that. It's not about the numbers. It's about the relationship. It's about the quality. And so if you can focus on quality over quantity from the start, you won't need a massive audience to have a seven figure business, you really won't. It's really about looking at how can we do more with what we have. Instead of just trying to go extremely big all of a sudden. I can't tell you how many bloggers, Instagramers, celebrities I've coached and mentored who have incredible audiences like huge numbers and they're completely broke because they don't know how to turn followers into buyers or they've attracted the wrong audience. So it's people who just want, you know, the freebie, who are not really thinking about doing business with that specific brand or just don't care enough about the offers. So I think that that's something that's really important and I'm excited to unpack it further.
Javier Mercedes [00:06:43] One thing I'd like to point out is in one of your videos you did talk about you hit 7000 subscribers and then you already had six figures for your company. I t hink that's to give context to the listeners to your argument of what you're talking about. Do you want to elaborate on that?
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:07:10] Sure. In terms of how we got there or?
Javier Mercedes [00:07:14] I would say where should people be focusing?
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:07:16] Honestly it depends on your goal. We all need to be profitable if we're running businesses. So if you're doing this as a hobby, that's a whole different story. I'm all for you growing your Instagram, growing your YouTube, your Facebook, whatever it is that you want to grow. If it's a passion project and you're doing it on the side, go you. That's where you need to focus. Just build your audience, build your people. But if you are thinking about it from a long term perspective or if you already have an established brand and you want to take it to the next level and scale it up, I think people need to really focus on building relationships with their people and just getting to know their ideal customer. Getting to know their followers. I can't tell you how important that is having those conversations. Gary V has been quoted a million times talking about the importance of just having that interaction, that connection with your tribe. Little things like showing up on live streams if you can. Being able to answer DMs, encouraging people to have real conversations with you is something that most creators don't do. And if they are doing it, they're not doing it to the full extent that they could be. And honestly, for me, it's a little bit of a selfish strategy. I truly mean that. I spend a lot of time answering questions and just being engaged with our audience as much as I possibly can. And then furthermore, we have a business where that's embedded into what we do inside the membership. So I'm constantly answering questions. I'm in that community very engaged because my people tell me what they want and what they need. And I need that information. If I'm going to put out offers that are going to sell. It's one of those kind of win win situations where if you've really fall in love with your audience and you're listening and you're having that conversation with them, you're connected with them, it will reap benefits like crazy for your brand. Because it'll give you all the information you need to, number one, create content that they actually care about, content that is going to allow you to get discovered and bring more people into your world like them. It's also going to allow you to figure out where your market is. Are they ready for this specific offer? What you should be pricing it at, what has to be the messaging and that specific type of marketing they are going to build to sell whatever it is you're selling. Whether it's services, physical products, online course, all those things are still important. It's like business 101. But we don't think about it that way because we're in the online space and we don't see people on a day to day basis. If you had your Instagram followers in one room altogether. Let's say they're 300 people all the time, I hear this from members "I only have 300 followers, I'm so disappointed." I'm like, are you kidding me? There's 300 people in a room who have literally raise their hands and said, hey, I want to hear what you have to say. So if you imagine it that way, having those conversations with people in a real life is a totally different dynamic than online. [00:10:26]When you're running an online business, you have to go the extra mile to connect with your followers. Otherwise, you're just another brand. You're just another Instagram account, you're just another YouTube channel. They don't really perceive you as human as much. [14.9s] I think that it's really important to have those conversations because it'll tell you exactly what you need to be creating. Most brands who are already scaling up and I've worked with a lot of companies who are, making a ridiculous amount of money online. They don't have the luxury of being super in tune with their customer base. Usually they don't do it on purpose. So when you're a smaller company and you can make changes quickly, you have that edge because you know you're people, you're connecting with them. You know exactly what they want. Whereas larger companies, after they're scaled up, go back and start from zero, trying to understand their audience again so that they can put out offers that resonate with them. [00:11:31]I don't think that we really understand the power of just being present and connecting with your audience and having real conversations and setting yourself up for success in that way. [11.9s] I know that that sounds very theoretical, but simple things like encouraging your audience to comment back on every single post that you put out. Some kind of call action, whether they're commenting or they're replying to an email or they're sharing their feedback on a poll. [00:12:04]You have to constantly ask, what they're feeling, what their challenges are, because that'll help guide your direction in general. And it's such a powerful thing that I don't see enough creators doing. [10.5s]
Javier Mercedes [00:12:16] I'm just unpacking everything you just said in my brain. Let's say somebody listening to this already has a platform that they've focused on, either Instagram, YouTube, blogging, whatever that may be. What about E-mail and e-mail lists. That's somehting I don't know what to do with it. I know I was supposed to do something with it. So I have it and it's growing ever so slowly. But when it comes to interacting with your audience, I know when going to networking events and other things like that, other people are always saying that your e-mail list is your most powerful tool to be utilizing. What kind of argument would you say to somebody in my case? Like, "hey, man, do something with your e-mail list!
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:13:15] I love that question. I think it goes back to the original question that you asked about, how I got to six figures with only about 7000 subscribers. And it really is, again, relationships. So the way that you leverage an email list for you specifically, Javier, from a practical standpoint, I would be sending your e-mail subscribers content at least once a week. So whenever you put out a new video, just a quick "this is what we're talking about this week. Really excited for you to watch it. Leave a comment about what you thought with, X question". And that is a good way of training your list to know to look out for e-mails on your episodes. You can also -
Javier Mercedes [00:14:03] It's like a light bulb just goes off. What you're saying is so simple. And I probably have heard it before. And I know I'm cutting you off, but it's just like, boom. Okay. Yeah. That makes complete sense.
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:14:13] Every week, right? Every single week. You're creating a like these videos are incredible. You're repurposing them on social media. They're so great. But I think we forget often that people are busy and they might be following you on Instagram. [00:14:27]They might be subscribed to your channel, but they're not necessarily going to stop everything they're doing and watch the video. So really, e-mail comes in place to build that relationship. And then when it's time to actually transition your e-mail subscribers to buyers with the launch of a course or whatever else you have to offer, whether it's services, coaching, an event - that's literally your golden ticket. Your email list is the most profitable asset that you have as an online business owner. [30.5s] And you'll See this time and time again. Conversion rates on e-mail lists are not comparable to social media. I mean it's incredible. So I would highly, highly recommend building that now so that when you do have something to sell or I know you have amazing offers, but I'm just saying, if you're starting and maybe you don't have something to sell right now, you can already have built up all this goodwill with your email list. Like you're sending your content every single week. They have to be the VIPs because anyone can subscribe to our YouTube channel. But if they're giving you access to their personal inbox, that's a big deal, right? So you want to respect it. Build a lot of goodwill. And when it's time to pitch your specific offer. That's where most of your clients are going to come from. They're not necessarily going to come all from social media. [00:15:43]So I highly recommend building that email list, giving those people a lot of love. You can even do some cool stuff with like giving them exclusive access to bonus content. Not something that you have to like put a ton of time and effort into, but maybe like once a month do something cool for them. [14.6s] Because those are the people who are going to support you when you have something awesome to sell.
Javier Mercedes [00:16:08] Well, by the way, I'll probably put that in the show notes. If you would like to sign up for my newsletter. There was one previous guest that I just had where all he does is email marketing for bigger brands. And we talked about certain things like here's three value emails where we're not even trying to send them anywhere. We're just telling them things about a certain subject and building rapport. And then finally, some sort of here's a click through e-mail. How does that manifest itself in what you do?
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:16:42] Yeah, that's a great question. So I totally agree with that strategy. I think that especially when people are joining your list for the first time, and we kind of have two different ways we go about it when we're sending people through a specific funnel, sometimes where a lot more aggressive about saying, "hey, this is an offer that we think is incredible value. Here's a link." We're not pitching to them directly, but there is like a P.S. at the bottom. Hey, if you want more information about this, click here. It works really, really well. So it really depends on the niche and the industry that you're in. But when you're getting started. Value. Value. Value. Value. Value. For us, we kind of have two different routes that we take. Most of our subscribers who join our email list on from our Web sites organically, we're not targeting them through an ad. [00:17:33]They go through a set of videos and we get them to choose kind of what type of content they want to check out next. So we give them three options. Hey, are you interested in e-mail marketing? Are you interested in content marketing or are you interested in branding? [14.2s]
Javier Mercedes [00:17:48] This is genius by the way
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:17:51] Yeah, [00:17:51]that just gives them kind of puts them on a different email sequence and then we send them, over the course of two weeks, some value emails with links to our blogs or video, just our best resources on that specific topic just to indoctrinate them. It's literally called an indoctrination sequence. [14.9s] And just give them that kind of feel for who we are and what we have to offer. And we get replies from those e-mails like crazy which is really cool. People just telling us like, hey, this resonated with us a lot. Thanks so much. I have a question about this. Could you answer in the next episode? So that's how we run the organic side of the business. With Facebook ads. We get to be a little bit more aggressive. Because we're sending people directly to an offer. And if they choose not to use that, then we'll send them to a webinar or free class. And they also get to choose, would you want to learn about blogging? Or do you want to learn about social media? Or do you want to learn about branding? And so that's the process. But I highly recommend. And keep in mind, I've been perfecting this process for seven years, so I kind of know, what will work and what doesn't work. But in the beginning, when I was first getting started, it was more of like, "OK, I have one e-mail sequence that welcomes people in. And then once that sequence is over where I'm giving them a lot of value, I put them back in my newsletter bucket." So I'm giving them consistent content every single week on. That's value add. And then when I have a launch or when I'm doing a promotion, I will send them through that. It just depends on how advanced you want to take it. And where you're at right now. [00:19:26]There's some really cool things that you can do with e-mail marketing and automation, like you can go as far as to really segment people based on what pages they visited on your Web site. And trigger automations that way. Have they bought this specific product? Let's pitch them on this product and let's put them on another sequence that gives them a lot of value for a couple of months. And then let's move them into our highest end offer. So there is a lot that you can do I recommend starting simple and keeping it really tight and right and then adding on cool features as you move forward. But keeping in mind that those are your ideal clients. Those are the people who are going to buy and open up their wallets and say, yes. So you gotta treat them like the VIPs they get all the goods before everyone else. And I think that's really important. Just making that distinction between people who are social media followers and then people who are your email subscribers. [57.8s] I always want to make sure that we're giving those people first dibs on everything, especially when we're running any kind of promotion or we're building up a wait list for our next course. Those are all really important strategies that are embedded into our entire process of marketing our brand. So just as an example, whenever we're about to release a new program, a few months before while we're building it, we're already sending our email list a "hey, do you want to be on the early bird list for this launch? And that helps us gage the interest and also gives us a good idea of how profitable that launch is going to be. So it's really cool.
Javier Mercedes [00:21:08] Yeah, I've joined a couple emails now of other podcasters that I listen to. After I joined they sent me an email and then a week later there was another email. And dawned on me that that this is an automated process. It's so much easier. And then my question was going to be, "So now that it's an automated process, does your newsletter step on top of that?" But what you just said is it goes into a bucket. All these things I've been thinking about saying, "man, it'd be really cool if you could do this." And turns out you already can. It's just a matter of starting simple and then facilitating the tools from there. You mentioned a couple months out from whatever launch this may be, it could be any product that you're coming out with. Can you explain the importance of a content calendar and how that contributes to what you're launching and where you're steering the sails?
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:22:02] Totally. By the way, the questions you're asking are brilliant because these are the questions most people don't ask. I love that you're on on your game. [00:22:13]So when it comes to content, we are all the time, indoctrinated to think that we have to just publish more stuff. Like that's the gateway. That's that's the drug. That's the way that you get to the top. More, more, more. And that's a pretty thing. I love content probably more than most people think. I really do. But at the end of the day, being clear on why you're creating that content to begin with is really important. So most people make the mistake of not merging their promotional calendar with their content calendar. And so let's explain that first. [35.9s]
Javier Mercedes [00:22:49] Yeah. I would almost venture to say you should repeat that just so it's ingrained into people's brains. Continue.
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:22:56] Yes. I'm gonna repeat it. [00:22:57]You need to be merging your promotional calendar with your content calendar. [3.3s] That is like media 101. If you go to any large media company that runs their brand like a legitimate institution. You'll see that all the [00:23:15]time. Content has to be related to what we're selling right now. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to do this. [4.9s] So you're putting a lot of time and energy and it costs a lot to produce content. In time, effort, money a lot of times. [00:23:27]So it's important that number 1, you're planning your content in advance. Content calendar is really important to figure out. [7.0s] I'm going to be publishing, my long form content once a week on Wednesdays. And these are the topics. It can be literally that simple. And then taking that content and repurposing it on social media, then looking at, What are we going to be promoting in the next couple months? [00:23:51]Making sure that the content that we're putting out aligns with whatever we're going to be promoting is very smart strategy [6.4s] [00:24:03]because you're really priming your audience for a topic that you're going to be releasing, whether it's it could be a service, it could be a product. E-commerce brands [9.3s] that are doing content marketing usually do this really well. They know when their new product line is coming out and then they start a couple weeks before talking about that specific topic and releasing content related to it. One of the brands that I talk about all the time in the business lounge is Soko Glam. They really cureate K beauty products. And I think it's so brilliant. Because on their blog when they're coming up with a new release - they just came out with what they call is like they're "Soko award winners," which is the products that people love the most that year. They'll start subtly creating content around those specific products before y hey announce the launch. And that just puts on that product in front of peoples being conscious about it and they start really revealing it. Talking about ingredients, and then boom, they release on their awards season, give people an awesome discount. It's like the biggest event of the year for them. So any kind of brand can implement the exact same strategy. Let's say you have a promotion about a specific service. You can start talking to people about the problems that they might be facing around the solution that you have to offer. So if you're a photographer, I would be talking about, how to set up your equipment and how it can be a little bit challenging, how to solve that problem, how to hire a photographer. What to pay, what not to pay, what to ask, what not to ask, how to interview a photographer. Lots of different questions that can lead someone to say, "oh, I actually need this or I have this problem. It's cool that there's a solution to it." Implementing that process into every single one of your promotions is a must do when you are creating content. Otherwise, they're two separate things. And then you confuse your audience. Let's say for a you, you're talking about e-mail marketing on and then you're talking about podcasting and then you're interviewing someone else and they're talking about e-com. And that's great. But then if you're about to release videography course it doesn't really relate. There's no connection. So making sure that you have two or three weeks carved ahead of time talking about video and the importance of it, showing people giving value, showcasing your know how is super important.
Javier Mercedes [00:26:36] Can you relate it to creating goals and then staying connected to those goals? How do you do that?
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:26:46] Chris and I have a process where every single year we will go out on our goal planning retreat and we will map out our entire year. What do we want to hit? Quarter one, two, three, four. And then we kind of stick to those goals by doing quarterly reviews and setting out talking to our team about, hey, these are the goals that we have for this quarter. It really can be anything. But when we're talking about content specifically and conversions and how we're driving people to our site or how we're gonna be talking about a specific product launch, it really starts with numbers right. We're like, hey, this is the goal that we want to hit this quarter. What is it going to take? We'll look at historical data. How did you do last year? What were the things that we did well? And then what are the things that we did wrong? And then let's make sure that our content reflects that. So we'll go in and say, OK, we're going to be launching this specific product or we're gonna be pushing this existing product. Let's make sure that we, number one, try something different than we did last year. See how that goes. But then also learn from what we did. So whether it's we're going to be putting out, new content or going to release a new webinar, we're going to release a new livestream. We're going to be more active on our Facebook group. Those are things that lead us to that goal. And so whatever we do in terms of our content calendar has to align with that goal. And it's not always perfect, OK? We don't always hit those goals. We don't always plan it to perfection. Some weeks we need to get something out there. Let's just roll with it. But for the most part, whenever we're looking at our quarterly content calendar, we're looking at our goals first.
Javier Mercedes [00:28:19] When you're making them, I believe it's KPIs, - Key Performance Indicators - What does it look like over where you started, It was like 2012 right?
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:28:35] Yeah!
Javier Mercedes [00:28:39] I know you're the software app queen. If there was some software, to help make your business life more efficient, what have you seen changed? So anything that you would want to bring up in terms of creating goals and staying on top of your schedule? Because recently, [00:29:10]I just went into Google calendar and I started mapping out all of the videos I wanted to come out by a certain time. And just the other day, I switched up a video because a different concept was trending. I don't have to burn the midnight oil in my brain. Comparing it to a computer, I'm not running all of that memory to always think about topics, always reminding myself, "oh yeah, I want to make a video about that" - on top of "I need to email that other person" - and "I have to post that one thing." Just by having it all solidified in a calendar has made it so much easier. But I know from just briefly watching some of your content, you can take that to a whole nother level and make it so much more systematized.[43.6s]
Kimberly Ann Jimenez [00:29:58] So let's talk about systems for managing your own personal workflow and then let's go into cool tools that you could use. I think the first thing is finding a project management tool. I think that's a must have for you. It sounds like Google Calendar is awesome and now works for you. I love Google Calendar I think could be an awesome project management tool and there's some really cool ways out there that you could be using it on. Personally, I love using yellow. I'm obsessed with it. And so if you've ever kind of looked at, you know, tools like Monday, dot.com, polio, base cab, asana, they're all generally designed to help you manage your day to day tasks. Right. Like put things in a list to make sure that you have projects that connect to those, you know, little tasks that add up to something bigger. So for us, we run our entire team on on tremolo, everything from our content calendar to literally my grocery shopping list. I run my life and my business on yellow. And I think it's really important to just have one project management tool. It could be anything that jives with you on. You don't have to stick to tremolo, but I think it's one of the best out there because it just gives you that space of like being able to put everything that's going on in your brain into, you know, digital paper and you don't have to worry about. OK, I had this one idea. I personally have a whole trailer board just full of content ideas that I think of on the fly and just literally type up on my phone because it has an app and I just put it there and I don't have to worry about it. So I think it's really important to just at least have a project management tool if you have a team. This is like insanely important because you want to make sure everyone's on the same page. So, for example, my video editor is in the Philippines and whenever I upload a video, we have an entire checklist of the things that need to happen for that one video to turn into a blog post like 20 different social media posts, like everything you can think of a newsletter. How we're gonna repurpose it, how we're gonna edit it. Every single person on my team has an entire checklist of things that need to happen to make that video, you know, into a blog and release it into the world.